JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for March 14, 2014

It´s funny because is true!Freaking doctors´ handwriting!

You obviously don’t work in pharmacy…I do, and you be surprised at the chicken scratch we still have to read. Many old school docs still write by hand.

Not all use computers to fill out prescriptions for I have a hand-written one in my wallet right now.Nonetheless, I used my powers of imagination observation to read the prescription above and determine it says BANDAID

Even if they are hand-written, nowadays prescriptions are generally legible because too many people have been hurt (physically or financially) by mis-read prescriptions.

Some doctors will give a handwritten prescription if the patient is not sure they want to take the medicine. “Let me read up on the side effects”, or “this says stay out of the sun and I’m leaving for the beach tomorrow; I’ll fill it later”. Perhaps the patient wants to try some samples to see if there are side effects before they commit to a month’s supply, so the doctor will write a script for them to hang onto. Not common, but not unheard of, either. Most patients prefer the electronic prescriptions, because by the time you drive from the office to the pharmacy, the medicine is waiting for you.

I can send emails to one of my family doctors (the Wisconsin one) and her staff, and they email me back. But in most offices I ask whether they can contact me by email and they look confused and say, “We don’t do that!” Same deal with computer-written prescriptions. .

My pharmacist told me he often has to phone the doctor to ask what was actually prescribed.

Doctor I go to started using computers 4 years ago and he emails prescriptions to pharmacy the doctor’s still have to use Latin for medication. Doctor my mom goes to a different family practice I believe last year started using lap tops I’m surprised not few years ago. Eliminated job for filing patient’s medical files but safer.

It occurs to me that, with everybody going computers, it won’t be too long before nobody will understand the old jokes about a doctor’s poor handwriting!

A colleague of mine who is a psychiatrist in Rio de Janeiro, claims that doctors’ handwriting jokes are universal.

With many US schools no longer teaching cursive writing, I suspect that secondary schools, or at least colleges, will have to take it up in the same way that they used to have a remedial class in keyboarding.

A pharmacy journal I was shelving 30-odd years ago had scribbled scrips as its puzzle page.—Of at least the same vintage was the story of a society matron who invited the new doctor in town to a dinner party, but couldn’t read his RSVP. She took it to a pharmacist; he looked at it, went to his back room, gave her a bottle of pills and said, “That’ll be $10.50, please.”

Docs around here don’t print the prescriptions. Everything is done by a secret internet connection with the pharmacy.

I heard often that with my handwriting, I should become/should have become a doctor!

Military Treatment Facility (MTF) pharmacies are preparing to phase in e-prescribing. DoD wants to recapture prescription business from Tricare Retail because of the expense.