Why doctors have illegible handwriting: says an expert graphologist
The incomprehensible scribbles that doctors write have long been a legend. Knowledgeable people say that this is not only a problem of our doctors. Doctors all over the world write in illegible handwriting and this will have to be put up with. There are many hypotheses about this phenomenon, but we offer you the opinion of scientists. It turns out that the doctor's handwriting has a completely scientific explanation.
Some people think that doctors write in illegible handwriting on purpose. There is an opinion that this is some kind of secret code that helps to preserve medical secrecy. But the conspiracy of doctors does not exist and illegible handwriting is associated with a number of reasons of a different nature.
Only another doctor or pharmacist can make out the handwriting of one doctor. Unfortunately, this does not always happen and errors in reading are expensive. According to statistics, about 7000 patients die annually in the USA due to the handwriting of doctors. Keep in mind that in this country the lion's share of documentation is kept in digital form. It's scary to think how many victims of handwriting we have, because all doctors continue to write prescriptions and prescriptions. So only those whom the doctor treats with laughter are safe.
Victoria Kosogova, a psychologist and graphologist from the Inessa Goldberg Institute of Graphoanalysis, told why doctors write this way. An expert in the field of handwriting says that it all starts at the medical institute. A medical student has to assimilate a huge amount of information every day. Moreover, it needs to be written down in a synopsis.
The need to write quickly spoils students' handwriting. Doctors develop the speed of perception and the ability to analyze information during the training process. They acquire an important ability to put together a mosaic of the clinical picture from disparate symptoms. Strangely enough, they pay for this by worsening their handwriting, which becomes schematic.
With the beginning of medical practice, everything gets worse. A medic develops professional intuition. Graphologists say that this quality adds threadiness to the doctor's handwriting. Wavy lines, often intermittent, into which the written phrase turns, make the handwriting even more amorphous.
Further, many doctors have a stage of emotional alienation from patients. Fortunately, this does not always happen. In this state, the doctor remains indifferent to the patient's experiences concerning his illness. It helps the doctor to keep his cool, but this approach scares patients. Children are especially sensitive to the indifference of doctors. For whom going to the hospital is already a big stress and they want to get moral support.
The loss of the emotional component also affects the handwriting. The middle zone of letters suffers from this, where the lintels and curls of many letters are located. After that, the handwriting becomes similar to the curve of a cardiogram. Additionally, irritability, fatigue, and impatience affect the quality of handwriting. These factors cause the appearance of so-called "outliers". These are sharp strokes or angular elements in large numbers.
Undoubtedly, the need to write a lot also affects the handwriting. Victoria Kosogova, based on her own observations, identified the most illegible writing specialists. The graphologist believes that therapists, surgeons and orthopedists have the most problematic handwriting.
Scientists made an interesting observation by examining the handwriting of people of different professions and comparing them with the handwriting of doctors. For the purity of the experiment, samples of handwritten text from personal correspondence unrelated to the profession were taken. Oddly enough, but outside of work, the handwriting of a doctor, a driver and an engineer are almost the same.