From Time.com:
Doctors’ sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. It’s a shocking statistic, and, according to a July 2006 report from the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM), preventable medication mistakes also injure more than 1.5 million Americans annually. Many such errors result from unclear abbreviations and dosage indications and illegible writing on some of the 3.2 billion prescriptions written in the U.S. every year.
You would think that thousands of deaths would be alarming enough to institute some sort of major changes into the medical field and prescription business. Anyone have any great ideas?
At least I know Mindy has great handwriting. When she’s a practitioner she won’t be killing people at the stroke of a pen.
(ht. Derek)
You can almost hear a conversation along the lines of
“No..that’s not a seven, that’s a two.”
“You mean he didn’t need seven hundred milligrams of morphine?”
That is… fairly insane.
“at least i know mindy has great handwriting”
it sounds like you are saying thats the only thing she has going for her. ha! i know thats not how you meant it! i just had to say that.
but seriously, those stats are scary!
That is terrible. I always wonder why doctors seem to try to make their handwriting worse than average.