"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications incomprehensibleness."
-- from a forwarded email
Some time ago, I was in a queue when I overheard the guy at the desk commenting on someone's reservation form. "Are you sure you're a doctor?" was the witty remark. I consequently found out that the person in front of me was a doctor, and his penmanship was "surprisingly readable".
What is it with doctors and terrible handwriting anyway? Is it a requirement? Are they not allowed to append "M.D." after their names if they write legibly?
What, are they in too much of a hurry that they don't have time to write legibly? Lousy penmanship invites all forms of misinterpretation. The time saved by writing in the form of tumbleweeds will eventually be consumed by the person reading the "words" on the prescription. On a side note, pharmacists are required to sign up for handwriting analysis classes prior to graduation.
Every time I visit a doctor, I end up spending way too much time trying to decipher the cryptic messages he jotted down. I then resort to asking the good doctor about the drugs' names, after which the busy doctor is required to verbalize everything. In the process, we consume thrice as many minutes as it would have taken if he had exerted a little effort in ensuring legibility.
Future doctors of the world, please help everybody conserve time by improving your handwriting!
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By the way, did you notice that the very first sentence in this post was constructed using progressively longer words?
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