Oh, this is precious. This reminds me of my intern days at University of California Davis Medical Center, when I was learning to write orders in paper charts for nurses and others to carry out on my patients. I very quickly learned:
- Even if you have bad handwriting, strive to write legibly. What, don’t like getting paged at midnight for an illegible order? Oh.
- Think through what you’re going to write so that your order doesn’t read like a Jane Austen novel. RN’s have to manually transcribe your order verbatim into their records. Be nice.
- Pretend that nurses and other staff are MALICIOUS ROBOTS THAT ARE TRYING TO MISINTERPRET YOUR ORDERS IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE. Making that assumption forces you to write as clearly as possible. Nobody can see inside your head. This perhaps has been the best life lesson, not only for writing orders in patient charts, but for life in general. We won’t go into details.
CMIO’s take? Lesson 3 for me was brought back in full force by the above video. Thank you, Internet.
Malicious Robots, oh my !!
Alice will NOT approve, I fear.
I do spend a lot of time trying to write precisely and clearly. I always attributed this to my high school English teachers, but now . . . maybe it was nurses in med school and residency. Hmmm . . .