How Dangerous is a Doctor’s Bad Handwriting?

Does your doctor have bad handwriting? There's a good chance that they do. Find out what problems this can cause and how to protect you and your family from medication errors.

Doctors are well known for their bad handwriting – a fact that makes them the butt of too many jokes. All it takes is a quick glance at a prescription pad to see that these jokes are right on target. But, there's a not so funny side to bad doctor handwriting. A doctor's bad handwriting can cause patients to get the wrong medication or the right medication in the wrong amount – with devastating consequences.

A study carried out at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in Great Britain found that one in six hospital charts had prescription errors ranging from medication names and doses that were impossible to read to some that lacked necessary information such as the doctor's signature. When a doctor's signature is missing on hospital prescriptions and orders, treatment is put on hold until a nurse can get in touch with the doctor. There's no doubt that a doctor's bad handwriting causes a multitude of problems for both nursing staff and hospital patients alike.

Another problem arises when doctors use abbreviations when they write prescriptions. When indicating how many insulin units to give doctors often abbreviate them as I.U. for international units. The I.U. can easily be interpreted as a number – causing the patient to get an incorrect dosage of insulin – with potentially fatal results. The frightening reality is that seven thousand patients die each year due to medication errors.

A doctor's bad handwriting confuses and inconveniences nurses, pharmacists, and patients. Nurses in busy hospital settings have to take time away from patient care to get in contact with the doctor when an order is not legible. Pharmacists have to call the doctor to make sense of a carelessly written prescription – which they do all too frequently; and patients have to try to make sense of what they're taking and why the doctor didn't give them enough information.

How can you protect yourself and your family from medication errors due to a doctor's bad handwriting? One common mistake is where pharmacist reads the name of the medication incorrectly and gives the patient the wrong drug. Good Housekeeping magazine has a good suggestion to lower the risk of this happening. Hand the prescription back to the doctor and have he or she write on it what condition the medication is being used to treat. This way the pharmacist is less likely to confuse drug names even if it's difficult to read the prescription.

When you fill a prescription at the pharmacy, have a few pills from your old prescription on hand to make sure the pill looks the same and has the same information imprinted on it. Make sure the instructions on the prescription label read the same too.

Ask questions about any medication your doctor prescribes while still in the office. The more information you have about the drug and why you're taking it, the easier it will be to pick up errors at the pharmacy. While you're at it, urge your doctor to adopt electronic prescribing which is becoming more widely used due to the number of medication errors that occur because of illegible prescriptions.

You may not be able to change your doctor's bad handwriting, but don't blindly take the prescription your pharmacist hands you. Do a little detective work and make sure you're taking the right one.

Resource: http:/healthmad.com/health/how-dangerous-is-a-doctors-bad-handwritin