It is unlikely that the ordinary patient will be able to read the notes on the medical record the first time, if he is not a graphologist. The fault is the incomprehensible handwriting of doctors. Why is it so unusual and can it be understood? We will understand the article.
Causes
Calligraphic handwriting, that is, beautiful and clear writing, is not the strongest side of doctors. Someone may note that it is more important for a doctor to treat correctly than to write beautifully. It's right. But there are times when people suffer from medical doodles. Where do the roots of the catchy letter from doctors come from? It is believed that the illegible handwriting of future doctors is formed on the student bench, as they need to record a large amount of information in a short time.
Another reason is congestion. For each patient, the doctor should take 5-10 minutes and most of this time goes into the routine history, prescribing tests and prescribing. The doctor is forced to write quickly and, therefore, inaudible in order to manage to receive other patients.
The third reason is the medical secret, according to which the incomprehensible handwriting of the doctor protects the patient from the information in the diagnosis, which can agitate him and lead to stress or poor health. And it’s amazing that doctors understand each other. And if they don’t understand, they can ask.
Another reason is criminal. If the patient has health problems due to prescriptions, the doctor may say that he did not prescribe such treatment, since the incomprehensible handwriting can be deciphered in different ways.
Graphologists point out another reason for the illegibility of the handwriting of the Aesculapius - psychological, by which the doctor puts an emotional barrier between himself and the patient and abstracts from the feelings of the patient. Such a tactic is a necessary measure, otherwise emotional burnout may occur and the doctor will not be able to work in his specialty.
Who is suffering
The handwriting of doctors has long been a joke among the people. But some people, because of obscure recordings, are not at all up to humor. For example, pharmacists sometimes cannot read the name of a drug written in an incomprehensible handwriting the first time. And if they do, they may read it wrong. Such an outcome is fraught with dire consequences. For example, according to a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, in the United States more than 7,000 people die every year from illegibility in the handwriting of doctors. More than 1.5 million patients suffer from incomprehensible contractions in the prescription, dosage indications and illegible labels.
In Russia, such statistics were not officially kept. However, a case is known when a patient from the Omsk region sued a doctor, whose writing could not even be understood by forensic experts. The scribbles of an unlucky doctor led to a sad outcome - a woman after childbirth was in intensive care due to appendicitis, which the doctor diagnosed and illegibly wrote. The court granted the claim, obliging the hospital to pay the woman 100,000 rubles.
How to solve a problem
So that neither specialists nor patients would suffer from the handwriting of doctors, the Ministry of Health decided to equip all medical institutions with computers and create a local network where there will be a database of patients and electronic outpatient records. Such a measure will allow doctors to:
gain access to information about the patient’s health status;
form a unified database of medicines and avoid incorrect prescriptions;
keep up-to-date statistics during unusual situations, such as an extensive pandemic or a simple flu epidemic, which will allow the Ministry of Health to take the necessary measures to prevent and treat the disease.
How to make out scribbles
While the state is taking measures to computerize hospitals, ABBYY programmers have developed the MedText module for FineReader, which will decrypt the doctor’s handwriting in the medical direction or prescription. The patient only needs to scan the document, and the program itself will parse the scribbles and give the result in the form of block letters.
A not-so-calligraphic handwriting will help to decipher and unknown to the general public karakulegrafiya - a science that studies obscure notes based on strokes, lines, squiggles and serifs in letters.
Enthusiasts among Internet users create pictures with the so-called “medical” alphabet, which next to the printed letter depicts a lowercase corresponding to the handwriting of a doctor. Such an alphabet causes more laughter than real help. But to use it when there is no other way out is worth it. Maybe he will help to parse the fuzzy letter of the attending physician.