There’s a well known stereotype that doctors have incredibly poor handwriting. While I accepted this “rumor” to be true, I’ve verified it first hand by working at St. Luke’s where all the notes are handwritten.
Being on a consult team forced me to read the notes left by other consult teams as well as the primary care team. The sad truth is that out of the ‘x’ minutes I dedicated to each patient, roughly ‘x/3’ minutes go purely into deciphering physician orders and notes. One would think that in a profession as “life-and-death” as medicine… where a misread dosage or medication name could be catastrophic… ehhh, I’m not going to even finish this sentence. ;-)
One nurse put it frankly to me – “Your notes are the easiest to read, but since you’re a medical student, they matter the least. Sorry.”
Ouch. :-D
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