i guess the p and l are the important bits and the rest can just be inferred, since paracetamol is very commonly used and they'd get tired writing it in detail every time. other more specialized drugs with p___l (or close to it) as its name would have more squiggles i assume.
It's a super common prescription and most doctors probably couldn't spell it offhand. Combined with dosing info it would be more obvious. Also if they do happen to be wrong it's unlikely to actually cause harm with acetaminophen/paracetamol.
Edit: another benefit is disguising to a patient that demands something to take. Essentially a placebo.
Funny, but also not. Just Googled because I couldn't remember:
"According to the Institute of Medicine, physician's illegible notes lead to approximately 7,000 deaths annually."
Seems unreal. Even if it was half that...that's a lot of people. If I was getting prescribed drugs, I want it LEGIBLE. Typed up would be great. I just don't trust that shit, and neither should any of you.
some said i was destined to be a doctor with my handwriting and family. i decided to break the cycle and become a videographer that barely scrapes by. my family is... they like the videos i make of our get togethers...
This is likely why I haven't seen my doctor write anything for over a decade. Literally everything is done on the computer now. There's a rolling computer in each room. The only handwriting I saw was by the nurses on a big whiteboard when my wife was giving birth. Just to pass notes and write times.
This literally just happened to me at the doctor's office. I brought up that I'm interested in trying guanfacine to help with my ADHD and blood pressure and my new doctor tried to correct me.. I should probably look for a new doctor.
Back in the day I used to work at one of the largest hospitals in the US. In my last year there they had started having doctors record their notes, issues order, and prescriptions, on an audio file, using and issued microphone. Then that stuff was sent to a group of people transcribing everything in text. these scribes would also fill out forms for the orders and prescriptions. they did this in response to a series of lawsuits they lost badly.
Meanwhile, here in Sweden, when I get a perscription, my doctor types on his computer for five min, I then walk to any pharmacy, hand them my ID, of they have it they will offer a cheaper alternative, if they don't have any of the medicine, they will tell me which pharmacy does, if none has it they will order it for me.
Oh it's a problem here to. You do not want to know how much information is passed on through rapidly scrawled sticky notes in our healthcare system - particularly in emergency situations.
Works for a couple of years in Poland. You give them your personal identity number and a 4 digit number you get from a doctor (or you can go to a government website and get it from your perscriptions directly) and you get your perscription. We also have websites dedicated to finding medication, available to everyone. You can even sometimes reserve it online.
Japanese has a very elaborate cursive system that is part chinese caligraphy and part native. If you're familiar with hiragana and katakana then think of each character as normal chinese caligraphy BUT the chinese characters that were adapted for japanese grammar in the 700-800 ADs get written VERY quickly and lots of strokes are taken out so you need to learn to identify the writers intention and understanding in context is absolutely essential. It takes a ton of practice and memorizing all the different permutations and their changes over time.
40% of the visit is typing. They need to keep history, write the perscription etc. Nowadays they do that on PCs. Though I used to have a doctor that wrote everything on a typing machine. You'd tell him what's wrong and then he'd write it, often with tons of typos (he wouldn't start over). Obviously meds were always correct, it was just funny seeing a doctor butchering words and being unable to correct himself.
Pre-electronic records, yes they wrote a lot. Lot's of things were done in shorthand or with forms to reduce the writing. It's also that a doctor's time is valuable, saving 30 seconds on a prescription is a lot when you write 10s or hundreds per day.
What about the little story about red riding hood along that last twisty bit? It's funny because of the British accent, clearly nope, specially not on percetamenofemol as prescribed.