🚀 go-pugleaf

As   this relates to gun ownership, maybe the pen is mightier than the sword
when it comes to killing people. Where is Sara Brady on this issue, doctor
mistakes kill more people in this country than firearms. From MSNBC News
1/5/2001:

Doctor penmanship is no joke

Experts claim prescription errors kill 7,000 in U.S. each year

By George Lewis
NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 5 - One of the standard jokes about medical doctors is
hardly a laughing matter. It's the one about their handwriting - which is
almost uniformly illegible. The trouble is, it shows up on prescription
forms and that can lead to big trouble.

        A GROUP OF DOCTORS - learned men and women of medicine who've been
through years of college, medical schooling, internships and residencies -
are back in class. What are they learning now?
       It's a course in basic penmanship. There are all sorts of jokes about
doctors' lousy handwriting, but Paul Hackmeyer, Chief of Staff at
Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles takes it seriously.
       "We decided to look into why we had our medication errors," Hackmeyer
says, "and one of the most important areas was physicians' handwriting."
       All too often, doctors treating patients scribble prescriptions for
medication illegibly. The means sometimes people get the wrong medications.
       "The worst case scenario is that the patient could die," says
hospital pharmacist William Churchill. "That, obviously, is the worst case."
       That's what happened to Ramon Vasquez of Monahans, Texas. Five years
ago, he suffered a fatal heart attack after taking an overdose of the wrong
drug.
       His doctor said he prescribed Isodril, a heart medication. The
pharmacy read it as Plendil, a blood pressure drug. The Vasquez family sued
and won a $450,000 judgment.
       According to the Institute of Medicine, prescription errors kill up
to 7000 Americans each year. The annual cost to society is estimated at $77
billion.
       Doctors in this country write three billion prescriptions each year.
The urgent issue now is how to make sure the medicine the doctor orders is
really what the patient gets.
         At Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, doctors are using a
computerized system where they enter their prescription orders online. It's
all done in clearly readable text - there's no handwriting to interpret. The
computers double-check to make sure the right medication is going to the
right patient.
       "We show that this software reduced the serious medication error
rates by 55 percent," says Dr. David Bates of Brigham and Women's Hospital.
       A similar system lets Doctor Dale Distefano, a neurologist in Newport
Beach, California, write prescriptions on his palm pilot electronic
organizer. In an instant, the device transmits his order electronically to
the patient's pharmacy.
       "The benefits that patients are most likely to be aware of,"
Distefano says, "are the fact that it is a legible prescription that is not
likely to be misinterpreted by a pharmacist and the fact that it's
transmitted so quickly to their pharmacy."
       So, as some doctors work on improving their prescription writing
skills, others look forward to the day when paper prescriptions will be
rendered obsolete by 21st century technology - reducing risks for medical
patients.

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