The truth about doctors' handwriting: a prospective study.
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether doctors have worse handwriting than other health professionals.


METHODS
Comparison of handwriting samples collected prospectively in a standardised 10 seconds' task.


METHODS
Courses on quality improvement.


METHODS
209 health care professionals attending the courses, including 82 doctors.


METHODS
Legibility rated on a four-point scale by four raters.


RESULTS
The handwriting of doctors was no less legible than that of non-doctors. Significantly lower legibility than average was associated with being an executive and being male. Overall legibility scores were normally distributed, with median legibility equivalent to a rating between "fair" and "good."


CONCLUSIONS
This study fails to support the conventional wisdom that doctors' handwriting is worse than others.' Illegible writing is, however, an important cause of waste and hazard in medical care, but efforts to improve the safety and efficiency of written communication must approach the problem systemically- and assume that the problems are in inherent in average human writing-rather than treating doctors as if they were a special subpopulation.
Berwick
D M
DM
Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Winickoff
D E
DE
D005260:Female; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010820:Physicians; D011446:Prospective Studies