STUDIES FIND DOCTORS REALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE
MARC ABRAHAMS, GUARDIAN Doctors have to suffer jokes about their supposedly horrendous, illegible handwriting. But several studies bolster their reputation for scratchy scribbling.
There is illegible handwriting in Australia. We know this from a 1976 study in the Medical Journal of Australia, which tells how the handwriting of "a large number of" doctors and non-doctors was tested and compared. The handwriting was graded, and four different statistical tests were performed on the results. The study's author, H Goldsmith, reports that "in all of these tests the doctors' handwriting came out significantly worse. Thus the only conclusion which could be established from these results was that doctors' handwriting is indeed less legible than others."
On the other hand, so to speak, there may be moderately legible handwriting in some parts of America. A 1994 report by five researchers in Indiana, Michigan and Virginia compared the time it took to read internists' handwritten notes with the time needed to read typed versions of those same notes. The handwritten versions, they report, took only 46% more time to read, and just 11% more time to comprehend. From this they conclude, somehow, that "The legibility of physician handwriting is not as dismal as assumed; physicians can effectively communicate on paper".
Researchers in Texas reached an opposite conclusion. In a 1997 study published in the journal Heart and Lung, they asked experienced nurses to assess doctors' handwritten orders for medication. The results: "20% of the medication orders and 78% of the signatures were illegible or legible with effort." In 1998, four doctors in Swansea, Wales - Ronan Lyons, Christopher Payne, Michael McCabe and Colin Fielder - used computer technology to compare their fellow physicians' handwriting with that of administrative staff and other healthcare professionals. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, are dismal. Lyons, Payne, McCabe and Fielder write (or, more likely, type) that "doctors, even when asked to be as neat as possible, produce handwriting that is worse than that of other professions".
However, in that gloom they do see one ray of light: "A surprising finding of our study is that the poor legibility was confined to letters of the alphabet rather than numbers. This may reflect the importance attached by doctors to the legibility of drug doses."
GA Cheeseman and N Boon of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh published a report called "Reputation and the Legibility of Doctors' Handwriting in Situ," in the Scottish Medical Journal in 2001. They compared the handwriting of doctors with that of nurses, and found that the doctors write "significantly quicker" and that their handwriting is "significantly less legible". Cheeseman and Boon express optimism, because they see unexpected clarity amid the confusion. The sunny part of the story, they say, is that only "a small minority of the doctors was responsible for the majority of illegible words written by that group".
SEWER EPIDEMIOLOGY
NEW SCIENTIST The Milanese are partial to a line or two of cocaine. The same goes for many drug users in London, although they dabble in heroin more than their Italian counterparts. Both cities like ecstasy at the weekends and cannabis pretty much every day. Welcome to the results from a new branch of public health: sewage epidemiology. . .
The team, headed by Ettore Zuccato and based at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, looked at samples collected from sewage works in London, Lugano and their hometown. They showed that the results are reproducible - samples taken on the same day in different weeks give similar results - and roughly in line with other estimates of drug use.
The data also provide a level of detail that other methods may miss. Official figures for Italy show that 1.2% of the population, or 10,000 people in Milan, use cocaine. If every one of those was what researchers call a "light" user - someone who consumes around 16 grams annually - 160 kilograms of the drug would disappear up Milanese noses every year.
MARC ABRAHAMS, GUARDIAN Doctors have to suffer jokes about their supposedly horrendous, illegible handwriting. But several studies bolster their reputation for scratchy scribbling.
There is illegible handwriting in Australia. We know this from a 1976 study in the Medical Journal of Australia, which tells how the handwriting of "a large number of" doctors and non-doctors was tested and compared. The handwriting was graded, and four different statistical tests were performed on the results. The study's author, H Goldsmith, reports that "in all of these tests the doctors' handwriting came out significantly worse. Thus the only conclusion which could be established from these results was that doctors' handwriting is indeed less legible than others."
On the other hand, so to speak, there may be moderately legible handwriting in some parts of America. A 1994 report by five researchers in Indiana, Michigan and Virginia compared the time it took to read internists' handwritten notes with the time needed to read typed versions of those same notes. The handwritten versions, they report, took only 46% more time to read, and just 11% more time to comprehend. From this they conclude, somehow, that "The legibility of physician handwriting is not as dismal as assumed; physicians can effectively communicate on paper".
Researchers in Texas reached an opposite conclusion. In a 1997 study published in the journal Heart and Lung, they asked experienced nurses to assess doctors' handwritten orders for medication. The results: "20% of the medication orders and 78% of the signatures were illegible or legible with effort." In 1998, four doctors in Swansea, Wales - Ronan Lyons, Christopher Payne, Michael McCabe and Colin Fielder - used computer technology to compare their fellow physicians' handwriting with that of administrative staff and other healthcare professionals. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, are dismal. Lyons, Payne, McCabe and Fielder write (or, more likely, type) that "doctors, even when asked to be as neat as possible, produce handwriting that is worse than that of other professions".
However, in that gloom they do see one ray of light: "A surprising finding of our study is that the poor legibility was confined to letters of the alphabet rather than numbers. This may reflect the importance attached by doctors to the legibility of drug doses."
GA Cheeseman and N Boon of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh published a report called "Reputation and the Legibility of Doctors' Handwriting in Situ," in the Scottish Medical Journal in 2001. They compared the handwriting of doctors with that of nurses, and found that the doctors write "significantly quicker" and that their handwriting is "significantly less legible". Cheeseman and Boon express optimism, because they see unexpected clarity amid the confusion. The sunny part of the story, they say, is that only "a small minority of the doctors was responsible for the majority of illegible words written by that group".
SEWER EPIDEMIOLOGY
NEW SCIENTIST The Milanese are partial to a line or two of cocaine. The same goes for many drug users in London, although they dabble in heroin more than their Italian counterparts. Both cities like ecstasy at the weekends and cannabis pretty much every day. Welcome to the results from a new branch of public health: sewage epidemiology. . .
The team, headed by Ettore Zuccato and based at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, looked at samples collected from sewage works in London, Lugano and their hometown. They showed that the results are reproducible - samples taken on the same day in different weeks give similar results - and roughly in line with other estimates of drug use.
The data also provide a level of detail that other methods may miss. Official figures for Italy show that 1.2% of the population, or 10,000 people in Milan, use cocaine. If every one of those was what researchers call a "light" user - someone who consumes around 16 grams annually - 160 kilograms of the drug would disappear up Milanese noses every year.
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