Sometimes you look at your medical record and can’t figure out whether you were diagnosed with flat feet, a heart attack, or Parkinson’s disease.

Why do most medical workers such illegible handwriting?

Let's start with the fact that handwriting is a reflection of the personality as a whole. Our handwriting reveals our natural inclinations (type of nervous system, temperament, psychotype), character traits and psychological problems: complexes, consequences of prolonged stress, etc.

We know that any profession into which a person is immersed inevitably has an impact on his personality.
In the case of doctors, the influence of the profession begins to be felt even from the student’s bench. At the first stage, a medical student needs to absorb a huge amount of information and learn to quickly record it in writing.
The student develops such qualities as speed of perception and analysis of information, the ability to quickly put together a puzzle of symptoms into a single clinical picture. And these qualities are reflected in handwriting, which becomes fluent, different from the standard school copybooks, and less legible.

At the second stage, in the process of medical practice, with experience, the specialist develops professional intuition.
In handwriting, intuition manifests itself in the form of thread-like forms (the thread in handwriting is like a flexible and hair-thin stroke; it makes the form somewhat amorphous). This often has a negative impact on readability.

And at the third stage (which, fortunately, does not always occur), emotional alienation from patients occurs, expressed in indifference to the person’s mental experiences associated with the disease. In this case, the role of the doctor is reduced only to a function, even an effective one, but, for example, in the field of pediatrics this is already a big problem: Warm emotional contact is important for children in the frightening situation of going to the doctor.

The loss of the positive emotional component in handwriting is expressed in the deformation or disappearance of the middle zone of the letters (the middle zone is the core of the letters without taking into account the upper and lower processes). Handwriting can become similar to an electrocardiogram recording - it is clear that the readability of handwriting will suffer greatly.

I would also note such qualities that some doctors develop, such as impatience, irritability, and a feeling of constant fatigue. At the same time, more sharp strokes (outliers), angular elements, and distorted letters appear in the handwriting.

I didn’t specifically collect statistics, but, in my opinion, traumatologists, therapists and surgeons write most illegibly.

Vladimir, pulmonologist
My handwriting is legible, but when you write seven or eight A4 sheets by hand in an eight-hour working day, I think it leaves an imprint.

Plus, if it is written illegibly, then during analysis it is more difficult for the authorities to get to the bottom of it; many even write the numbers in the diaries in such a way that it is unclear, for example, whether the pressure is 130/80 or 150/60. (With )

It is worth noting that not all doctors have clumsy and illegible handwriting. However, there is indeed a tendency for doctors' handwriting to become unreadable.

It is not connected with the profession as such, but with the psychological qualities that are necessary to one degree or another for people in this profession, developed over time, or that are innate.

Firstly, it is quick thinking.

Doctors need to quickly assess a person’s condition, analyze various symptoms, compare tests and, based on the information received, draw a conclusion - make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment. This procedure requires the ability to focus on the main thing, without being distracted by trifles, and to generate facts into a single system. What is required is so-called combinatorial, holistic thinking and handwriting, with the corresponding inner essence of the personality - it becomes fast, abstract, flying over the words, the writer partially misses connectives and underwrites letters, thereby making it difficult to read.

Secondly, they become less susceptible to the people around them, they put an emotional barrier between themselves and the patient in order to be more objective and abstract from the patient’s feelings. Thus, psychological protection is activated, otherwise... professional burnout and internal worries will not provide the opportunity to work in this profession for a long time.

In handwriting, readability is directly related to social skills: the ability to listen, sympathize, including accepting and understanding the feelings of another person. It is these qualities that begin to dull over time in a person who, due to his profession, constantly deals with other people’s grief and pain, but where his main task is not the manifestation of psychological understanding, but analysis and provision of help, even if it causes pain. This is especially true for surgeons, medical researchers, etc.

Thus, many doctors' handwriting actually turns out to be less readable, and over time this trait may become stronger. Unfortunately, recently the lack of emotional and mental intelligence of doctors is increasingly leading to callousness and disregard for a person and the value of his life. At the same time, it is important to understand that this fact does not mean that the doctor’s handwriting is unreadable and less “psychological” - precisely because of high intelligence or quick thinking.

But this tendency to abstract from feelings and experiences is not found in everyone. Some retain the ability to empathize and sympathize with the people around them. Then the doctor’s handwriting will still have some relative readability.

Illegible “doctor’s handwriting” is a problem not only in domestic medicine. It is estimated that about 7 thousand people die each year in the United States because prescriptions were written to them illegibly.

Graphology specialists from the American concern Pilot Pen studied the handwriting of 120,000 doctors from different countries. Graphologists paid attention not only to the handwriting itself, but also to how it reflected the personality of the writer. It turned out that doctors write quite legibly, tend to please their superiors, and are not after money. According to a study, 9 out of 10 doctors have easy to read handwriting. The 10% who write in scribbles are characterized by a superficial attitude to things and a lack of desire to delve into the depths of the problem. Signs of obsequiousness were found in the handwriting of 65% of doctors, and this did not depend on nationality or specialty. But among the doctors there were few selfish people. The handwriting showed that spiritual and intellectual needs are more important for the majority than material ones. Experts did not find any signs in the writing style that indicate greed (hooks at the beginning of letters). Many doctors prefer to talk than to listen (this character trait is demonstrated by the open lines in the letters "o" and "a").

Among other things, graphologists have found out What character traits are typical for representatives of different medical specialties?:

Cardiologists are energetic, open to new things, and able to make quick decisions.

Neuroscientists are forward-thinking, intuitive, resourceful, engaged, and sophisticated.

Surprisingly, only 15% of orthopedic surgeons were right-handed based on handwriting.

Male gynecologists are the most nervous and depressed of all specialists. They attributed their condition to the greed and ingratitude of their families, as well as numerous lawsuits over medical malpractice.

Female gynecologists are optimistic and full of energy.

Anesthesiologists are able to judge soberly and objectively, and are not prone to impulsiveness.

Are doctors really being taught to distort handwriting beyond recognition so that, if something happens, “the prosecutor will not be able to decipher it”? There is an opinion that handwriting deteriorates due to excessive “written” loads - first at the institute, then during work (it is estimated that the average doctor writes 10 sheets of A4 paper per day).

There is even a special website on the Internet where patients are seriously offered to decipher any doctor’s note and convert it into digital form for money.

There is a joke among doctors that, in connection with the general computerization of hospitals and clinics, a special illegible computer font is being developed for printing medical documents...

My first teacher in surgery (Professor P.) during the first lesson showed me a certificate and offered to give an automatic exam to the person who deciphered it. For 30 years, no one has succeeded in this (they had to take an exam).

Personally, I have 2 handwritings: the first is “medical”, the second is calligraphic (I use it to write applications for vacations or for receiving bonuses and financial assistance).

And now a few examples from life...

A doctor’s handwriting often poses a serious problem for patients, since they are unable not only to understand the specifics of treatment and prescribed medications, but even to find out what diagnosis they have been given.

Doctors' handwriting is always a reason for jokes on the part of patients. However, jokes aside, often the shortcomings, or rather, the specific characteristics of a doctor’s handwriting, very often become an obstacle to the normal continuation of the patient’s treatment. Often, neither the patient himself, nor his friends and relatives, nor, moreover, the employees of pharmacies and pharmaceutical points are able to simply understand what treatment the doctor prescribed, what medications he prescribed, in fact, what diagnosis he ultimately gave the patient. The fact is that it is not always possible to contact the same doctor again in order to clarify the information contained in the document issued by him. In addition, the health care worker himself may have different perceptions of the fact that the patient was unable to understand his handwriting and did not recall recommendations that were repeated to him orally.

Currently, doctors in most cases still write out medical certificates manually, which makes the problem of medical handwriting very relevant. To receive a medical certificate that says something, but it is impossible to understand what exactly is written there, is the same as not receiving a medical certificate at all. However, doctors most often look at this problem with a smile. Some of them even find this state of affairs entertaining and interesting. In fact, today few Russian medical workers take seriously the fact that he or any of his colleagues write in a manner that is illegible and incomprehensible to patients. It must be said that there is a kind of paradox: in most cases, doctors’ handwriting is beautiful, but at the same time completely unreadable!

and often for subsequent transmission to official authorities, illegibility of a health worker’s handwriting can create additional difficulties for a wide range of people on a wide range of issues. A medical certificate is an official document, which, if properly executed, can become the basis for a person to enjoy various rights and expand numerous opportunities for him. All this is, to some extent, prohibited if it is not entirely clear what information a particular medical certificate specifically contains.

Modern technologies make it possible to issue medical certificates to patients in printed form, since computers, fortunately, have long ceased to be a rarity. However, now they are still not available in all medical institutions and, especially, not in every doctor’s office. You can only get a medical certificate in printed form in expensive clinics or large medical centers. In addition, in recent years, conclusions based on the results of medical examinations have begun to be issued in printed form. Today, almost all diagnostic rooms where medical equipment is used have been equipped with computers.

At the same time, we repeat that computers currently do not provide a solution to the problem of medical handwriting due to the fact that they simply are not directly related to the work of the majority of medical workers in domestic medical institutions.

The health workers themselves, assessing the initial reasons for the fact that almost all of them have unreadable handwriting, express approximately the same point of view. The specifics of the work require that the health worker writes often and a lot. Doctors not only issue medical certificates, but also constantly fill out patient cards, medical histories, epicrises of various types, internal reporting and accounting documents, and much more. Moreover, medical workers have to write quite quickly, since the patient may need this or that medical certificate urgently. In addition, writing speed is also needed for more fast execution formal organizational part of medical work. In other words, the doctor tries to write faster in order to quickly finish writing and move on to direct medical work. When any person writes quickly, he writes illegibly, letters merge, characters become unclear, etc. In addition, medical certificates for the most part are of a standard nature; the same words are traditionally written there, the meaning of which can be guessed from the meaning. Actually, this is approximately what happens in most cases in practice.

On the other hand, in some cases, doctors still show some diligence and strive to make their handwriting at least more readable than usual. This applies to cases when an insurance claim, a forensic medical expert report is issued, or when we are talking about a serious or complicated medical case. Please note that if the patient’s treatment was carried out with errors rooted in the unclear compilation of medical documentation by the health worker, then it is likely that this particular health worker will subsequently bear a significant share of the responsibility for the unprofessional treatment of the patient.

Accordingly, it is beneficial for doctors to write more legibly. At the same time, many of them quite sincerely believe that their handwriting, if not the most legible, is at least quite readable with some effort. Moreover, one doctor will most likely easily understand the most intricate curlicues of another doctor, which once again proves that the specific handwriting of doctors is nothing more than their professional feature.

After visiting the local clinic, the patient tries to understand the new medical records. The task is not easy. As a rule, after five minutes of effort, even the most curious person gives up. You can read below about why doctors have incomprehensible handwriting and how to understand it.

How to read a doctor's handwriting?

The attending doctor usually does not have a stylish calligraphic handwriting, but how would you like to read the medical history yourself, and later find it on the Internet? folk recipes healing of illness.

The following will help you decipher the recipe:

• . In 2014, representatives of ABBYY Corporation completed the development of the MedText module. What the user needs to do is scan a referral for treatment or a prescription to a pharmacy - the program will do the rest.
• Caricature . This science is not known to the general public, but doctors like to use it when describing diseases. The point is to learn to recognize letters from foreign elements: tendrils, extraneous strokes and lines, serifs and squiggles in letters, etc. If you have no problems with imagination, for a short time You can learn to read even very confusing text.
• . To help pharmacists and druggists, special medical alphabets are produced. It should be noted that there is no single alphabet! The healer writes in Russian or Latin, and the style may differ markedly.

This video will show a case in which Irina from the Omsk region won a lawsuit for 100,000 rubles due to the doctor’s illegible handwriting:

Why do doctors have bad handwriting?

There are many versions about why medical workers have bad handwriting. Not all of them are true. The fact that even pharmacists make mistakes when choosing a medicine prescribed by a doctor causes a storm of discontent among pharmacy visitors. The main reasons for unsatisfactory calligraphy of a doctor:

• Workload . A simple pediatrician at a public clinic is given no more than ten minutes to see a patient. During this short time he must:
  1. Listen to the complaint.
  2. Carry out an inspection.
  3. To diagnose.
  4. Prescribe treatment.
  5. Fill out the appointment on your medical card and write out a prescription at the pharmacy.

A natural conclusion: where the doctor saves his time is in writing a medical history.

• Healing mystery . There is an opinion that doctors write incomprehensible hieroglyphs deliberately. In most cases, they serve two purposes:
  1. Thus, they protect the nerves of overly suspicious patients.
  2. This is how you can “get out” in front of your superiors during a consultation: the pressure is 130/60, which can be interpreted as 150/80.

As you can see, under various circumstances, healers are able to encrypt diagnoses and test results.

How small issues turn into big problems

In 70% of cases, the beauty of a doctor’s letter is stolen by daily routine work. Everything goes harmlessly if the diagnosis includes a common ARVI. Another thing is serious illnesses.

An incorrectly chosen course of treatment can be fatal for the patient:

• Hospital treatment . Difficulties in reading outpatient cards are easily resolved: the neurosurgeon calls the cardiologist and clarifies what conclusion he wrote in the patient’s history.
• Recipe . The patient takes a prescription sheet and goes to the pharmacy. If a pharmacist misreads the name of a prescribed medication, serious problems may occur, which may even result in death.

There is a way out of the situation - as soon as possible, all medical documentation should be transferred to electronic format. Two problems are solved:

1. Data correctness . All medications will be in a single database, which will not allow prescribing an incompatible medicine to a patient.
2. Current statistics . In unusual situations, such as a simple epidemic or a widespread pandemic, the Ministry of Health, having up-to-date data, can quickly solve serious problems.

The fight against bad calligraphy by doctors in Russia

In addition to the unpleasant situations that arise from misunderstanding what is written, the usual assignment sheet has turned into a commercial project for many sales managers. Businessmen began to visit treating doctors and offered a reward for the drug they provided being included in the patient’s prescription.

In 2013, the Russian healthcare system stopped this unscrupulous practice:

• Active substance . In a prescription, you can only write the active ingredient of the drug, and not the commercial name of the drug. The pharmacist will help you choose the appropriate option:
  1. Finance . A pharmacy visitor will help you buy medicine based on your financial capabilities.
  2. Lobbying. Original foreign-made drugs are overly advertised and promoted to the domestic market of the country. The innovation will allow the development of domestic pharmacology.
• Transition to electronic format . By the end of 2017, every clinic in the country must be computerized. This practice exists in many countries around the world, and this significantly increases the efficiency of medical institutions.

Do you know that:

1. In ancient Rome, ointments, decoctions and lotions were made from natural ingredients: tree resin, palm oil, dates, honey, or from animals: donkey blood, fat, bile and even droppings.
2. In China, the profession of a doctor was passed down by inheritance, and in ancient Mesopotamia, healers were specially trained priests.
3. Egyptian doctors reached considerable heights in medicine. Archaeologists have found ancient papyri that described symptoms and treatments for more than 800 ailments.
4. The first medicinal powders appeared in Byzantium, and the first tablet, already in the 18th century, in Great Britain.

Now it becomes clear why doctors have incomprehensible handwriting: excessive workload and many years of routine work force them to write the same diagnoses, and over time, calligraphy begins to “limp.” The second reason is the doctor’s duty to protect the patient, who is already in a depressed state, from unnecessary emotional disturbances.

Despite the obvious explanations, the incomprehensible handwriting of healthcare workers remains the butt of jokes around the world.

Video: how to understand what the doctor wrote?

In this program, neurologist Larisa Novikova will tell you why doctors write so illegibly, which provokes them to do so: