title: Good handwriting: a vital element of a district nurse's duty of care.
abstract: Written records and prescriptions continue to be common in district nursing and will continue to be until the Government achieves its goal of a fully digital NHS by 2018. The main issue with written records and prescriptions is the risk to patient safety caused by poor handwriting, resulting in illegible instructions and prescriptions. In this article the author considers the duty of district nurses to write clearly and highlights the financial and human cost of poor handwriting.
authors.affiliation: School of Health Science, Swansea University. richard.griffith@swan.ac.uk
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Griffith
mesh_terms: D003152:Community Health Nursing; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D005568:Forms and Records Control; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D008318:Malpractice; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000517:prevention & control*; D009737:Nursing Records; D012308:Risk Management; D006113:United Kingdom