Deadly prescriptions
From the “news that’s sure to make you feel better” department: Doctors’ handwriting kills 7,000 Americans each year. These deaths are caused by illegible prescription notes. I suppose I’m lucky; I’ve never really been prescribed any lifesaving medicine, so even if there had been an error in some of the prescriptions I’ve gotten over the years, it’d have to be a big mistake to kill me (such as 1500mg warfarin instead of 15mg Prozac). I have gotten some prescriptions that are thoroughly unintelligible, and I always look on in awe as the pharmacist expertly decodes the scribbling (asking me for confirmation of what I’m supposed to be getting, of course).
The Time magazine article mentions a new electronic prescription system that avoids most of the pitfalls of written prescriptions. I say it’s about time. It’s totally unacceptable for over two times as many people killed on September 11 to die each year because of some totally preventable errors. Electronic prescriptions will also hopefully cut down on fraudulent prescriptions. It’s easy enough to grab or forge prescription notes and order up some illicit OxyContin. It’s much harder to do the same when all of the prescriptions are filed electronically and kept safe using encryption and passworded access.
This whole prescription problem is just one of a slew of problems brought on by a failure to integrate computers into all facets of society in a timely manner. How many other systems are still being run on paper? How many billions of dollars of productivity could be saved by taking all of these antiquated systems and running them electronically?
January 16th, 2007 at 18:34
Among the hospitals that call me in to prevent medication errors (by giving handwriting classes to the doctors), a fairly high percentage claim to have “computerized everything” 1 or 2 or 5 or more years ago … yet they still have handwriting problems, because of a crucial 1% to 5% of handwritten documentation that just won’t go away.
Doctors in “totally computerized” hospitals still scribble Post-Its to slap onto the walls of the nurse’s station, still scrawl notes on the cuffs of their scrubs during impromptu elevator/corridor conferences with colleagues … and, most of all, doctors with computer systems often have the ward clerks operate the computers, use the Net, or whatever: working, of course, from the doctors’ illegible handwriting. Bad doctor handwriting, incorrectly deciphered by ward clerks using the computer for any purpose, thereby enters the computerized medical record.
And what happens when disasters like Hurricane Katrina (or tsunamis) knock out a hospital’s network? More than one hospital, during Katrina, lost its generator, its electric power — and therefore its computer system — for the duration. Even the computer-savviest staff in these disaster zones had to return to handwriting. Let’s hope they wrote legibly.
Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair - http://learn.to/handwrite