Herman by Jim Unger for November 03, 2019

Practice makes imperfect.

Will make a great doctor.

Cudley obviously still hasn’t discovered word processors.

I often noticed that doctor’s notes and reports are full of typos and grammaticals errors even when wrote with Word .

Now he just needs to practice medicine and not let his first patient die.

Some joke themes hang around long after they should, for example, jokes about airline food. As for jokes about doctors’ handwriting, after enough people have died from misread prescriptions, there’s been a crack-down on the traditional scribblings. Time to move on to other jokes. (But then, since “Herman” has been in reruns for years, there’s no telling how old this joke is.)

Expect the RX’s to call for clarifications….

everyone makes fun of doctors’ handwriting, but you try signing your name 100s of times a day and see how good your handwriting deteriorates. (good writing takes time)

Learning to write – Eng 101 . Learning to write ‘doctorese’ – Pre med 101

One of my ex-bosses went to medical school to study penmanship.

A former boss of mine (MD, MPH), actually had very good penmanship… when I worked on the floors at a major hospital, attending physicians knew to write clearly as they can so that orders were transcribed accurately; our physician groups who admitted to our hospital used to have pre-printed standing orders for their patients, so that made it a whole lot easier. :-)

“Does that mean I pass?”

One of the doctors in our old office brought a portable typewriter to work with him. His handwriting really was THAT bad!

You would think in this modern-day and age, the doctor would simply enter the prescription into your medical file on his laptop or another electronic device, and share the script with the pharmacy of your choice by email.

Probably why they don’t do written exams in Med school.

As a physician, I used to get the reverse of this joke. “You can’t be a doctor, I can read your hand writing.”

Thought: a doc can’t write medical instructions clearly, so he gets a laptop and types away. If he depends on spell check what happens to the patient?