Why do generally doctor’s have bad handwriting?

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of course not all o them but most doctors I have met in my life have bad handwriting why is that?

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10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most answers have something right. I want to add my most important reason (as a doc): Speed and repetition. It might be the most important document for that specific patient’s life, but I have already re-written like 90% of it, another 10 times that day, for months and months. I just don’t finish the word and just scribble due to fatigue of writing the same stuff over and over.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Summary of responses to this moment: they need to write too much in a job where writing isn’t really **their** competence more than the average person

Anonymous 0 Comments

Doctor here: we have been writing our whole lives kindergarten – grade 24 takes it toll. Lol

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have extremely neat handwriting. Over time I’ve noticed it’s gotten slightly worse simply because there is a lot to write (in classrooms and clinical settings) and as long as it’s legible to you and whoever reads your writing that’s all that matters. It takes too much time and effort to write perfectly. It just needs to be enough to not affect patient care.

Source: med student

Anonymous 0 Comments

I figured it was for plausible deniability in case the prescription turned out to have unintended side effects.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Mostly speed n standing up
Scripts now go directly to pharmacy
No more paper scripts All electronic

Anonymous 0 Comments

Speed. Because of the volume of content in school, you take notes as fast as possible and it carries over in practice.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Some of it is a result of writting standing up – try to fill a chart without any wrist support and see how well you do.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In the US doctors think of themselves as better than everyone else and they don’t need to make themselves understood, everyone else needs make the effort to understand them.

If they wanted to write more clearly they could.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because they need to write a lot a day under stress. They just do not have time to do it properly. For example my dad used to create official document (expertise) for the court and had to sign every page (>150) afterwards. Imagine his signature… 😉