Do doctors really have the worst handwriting?
The truth about doctors’ handwriting: a prospective study
Researchers tested whether doctors really do have worse handwriting than everyone else. They don’t.
At courses on healthcare quality, 209 health professionals, including 82 doctors, were asked to write a short sample in ten seconds. Four raters then scored how readable each one was.
Doctors’ handwriting was no worse than anyone else’s. The least legible writers were executives and men. The famous doctor scrawl, it seems, is just ordinary human scrawl wearing a white coat.
Everyone’s handwriting is a bit of a mystery. Doctors were just framed.