Pharmacist could read these hieroglyphs like they have an auto translate..

As a child I was waiting at the hospital for a someone. Pharmacist asked, “what the hell is this supposed to say”!?!?? I read it off and got a quarter, a lot of money for about 1971-72 I made about $10 reading scripts that day, and two doctors came down to meet the kid who could read their messed up handwriting. My first job.

And I thought my handwriting was bad.

The question is how doctors manage to pass the tests when their handwriting is that bad?

I’ve been on a bit of a journey with this video! Originally I edited myself deciphering 10 doctors notes from my Google search but after a long edit I realised that ethically it didn’t feel right... Although all the notes were confidential and already published online I did not feel right discussing them as there was not explicit consent by the patient to do this. And also I wasn't sure if they was permission to upload them in the first place. Therefore I have only picked the notes that were historical, generic or widely distributed already. Despite these omissions I still hope you enjoy this one. Much love Your friendly neighbourhood junior doctor X

This episode of Cells At Work looks different today.

It's freakish to think that just that sloppy handwriting actually causes many deaths, not even to mention complications in general.

When I know the answer to a question in exam. I always write as neatly as possible and when I don't know the answer properly, I write like a doctor.

Ancient nurse here. I can help you out on the first one. Although the handwriting is indeed atrocious the other reason you can’t read it is because it is written in the apothecary system, which was still the standard in the 1940’s when this script was written. Learned it in ancient nursing school in the early 1980s because some older doctors still used it. This is a recipe for a compound to be mixed by the pharmacist. It reads: Codiene 4 grains (approx 260 mg) and ASA (aspirin) 30 grains (1950 mg) to be divided into 6 capsules (roughly 43 mg of codeine and 325 aspirin per dose). After the recipe are the instructions (sig) take one every 4 hours if needed for pain.

Whenver my late father(RIP) doctor gave us his notes I always thought that im trying to decipher an ancient language.

Yes, that Chinese one is real. As a native speaker I can't decipher anything from it, but I found that someone had the answer(?) typed out and using that as a key...a prescription of traditional madicine, recognized. It gose: 沙参20g 连翘25g 苏子15g 菊花15g, etc.

Is it so usual internationally that perscriptions are hand-written? Here (Germany), I can't remember when or if I had gotten a hand-written perscription in my life. They are generally printed on a form, only in rare cases where the perscription had a mistake, the doctor might correct it with a little note (that has than to be stamped and signed to proove that it was not the patient who changed it)

My mother works for a doctor, somehow shes able to decipher his handwriting, I once worked there for a day helping file charts and etc, but some names and notes were not even in a human language and I'd keep having to bug my mom while she was on the phone, or with a patient. And I have no idea how she can understand the incoherent flatlines and scribbles

I once had a high school girl (a relative of mine) ask me: "Where do you work?" "I work in a pharmacy" *she scribbles something on paper* (excitedly) "Can you read this? What does it mean??" Me (laughs): Well it looks like a heartbeat to me (ECG) 🤣

4:31 someone wrote it for you, isn't it?

I hope my handwriting never turns that bad 😂 in fact, every time I have to write a prescription, I do it slow so my handwriting is as legible as it can be

You have a potential to be a big KZfaqr considering that despite the irregular upload frequency you have a decent fan base (Try to maybe upload at least once a week to keep up with KZfaq algorithm).

I don't know if you're still doing "Doctor plays..." vids, but if you do you should check out Vampyr. You play as a Doctor in Victorian London who gets turned into a vampire and becomes, well.. a vampire doctor! ;p A big part of the game is treating patients. Though I imagine it's pretty inaccurate there's quite a few interesting cases, and I always think it's interesting to learn about medical history. Also if you have a really annoying patient you can just eat them, which might be a nice change of pace lol. Great vid as always :)

As a nurse, I've had to call clinics to clarify some orders. I once had five different nurses trying to decifer a lab order. We had to crack out a lab sheet just to get a sense of what was being asked.

Your translation skills are better than my entire understanding of the English language as a whole.

Ed Hope he'd make this into a series. Sorry; I'll show myself out

The first doctor's handwriting looks as if he tried to write with his left hand even though he's right-handed 😂😂😂

I’m an asthmatic saxophonist so I ace a peak flow every time due to woodwind technique 😂 Have to do spirometer(?) tests instead in the asthma clinic. Also an amateur calligrapher so love gorgeous writing!

I think it's a generation thing, I'm the last generation of drs who trained having to write everything by hand in a complete rush or in an emergency, all day. I had lovely handwriting in school. Now it's pretty dire unless I deliberately slow down.

I'm a unit clerk and when I went to school we literally took a class on how to read bad handwriting 😂

Pharmacist once gave me Ansimar lucky I heard my doc say Angimax while he was writing it down. So much better when your doc explains his prescriptions instead of solely relying on the written rx.

Dr hope: *writes neatly* Me: 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥𝕤 𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕘𝕒𝕝

Keep it up mate I love your content!!

I’m sort of surprised to see that a lot of countries still write these notes. Here in Belgium the only handwritten thing is the doctor’s signature Call me naive

I am lying in bed with a rhinovirus (boom I used a medical term 💪) + high fever right now, so a video from you feels like a blessing. 🤗

No wonder, people get all panicky when experiencing an asthma attack, especially when it's for the first time - that hyperventilating and being short of breath that happens when having an asthma attack often kicks in in a panic attack, too - albeit for different reasons. In asthma it's a symptom that happens when the bronchi get all cloaked up, in panic situations it's because the body is getting ready for a fight or flight situation. I still remember having my first asthma attack in class 6 when I didn't even know I got asthma. That really was terrifying. I also got a really mean case of test anxiety/ stage fright (more like a phobia, really) which really doesn't sit well with my tendency for low blood pressure and fainting, so I got first hand experience of how close those symptoms feel. The breathing techniques I learned as a kid in that special course they made us attend is one of the few tricks that actually help me get through those test/exam situation that really made my student life a lot harder than it should have been...

For those who are curious about the Chinese doctor handwriting, the writing is called Stenography. It's an old fast writing method that were widely used by journalists. Though no one really uses that handwriting anymore nowadays.

Love your videos! They always make me smile :)

Ever since I was a kid, I've always thought of pharmacists as calligraphy GODS. Oh and thank you for making me choke on my drink. 1:20 XD

Im not interested in going into a medical field and I don't know how I got to this channel, but the videos are so interesting and also informative that I had to subscribe 😂

I got a notification for this video while watching it... Great job youtube I love your channel Dr hope :) I worked in a doctors office for 3 years with 2 docs with a bad handwriting. We got a lot of stuff back with the question, if we could send it again in a better writing. We could mostly read the stuff, after a whole you got used to it Lots of love from Germany

Please do a colab with Dr. Mikhail vershovski Edit:thx for the heart ! 💓

Nerd joke was peak humour 👌 Irish gal here 😊 just wondering what you thought about the book This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay and how it compares to your experience in the NHS, maybe you could do a book review if you have the time

In Denmark, we have what is called "The Central Medication Server" which doctors, nurses, and others medical professionals with a Lvl 3 access (private Identifying personal info) can submit prescriptions to; Pharmacists have Lvl 1 access (in the moment,) meaning :when Social security card is scanned. All of this prevents bad handwriting, while also trying to limit who can see it, sometimes it can fuck up. If you have been hospitalised, and has a drug you take daily, they will add that to the server (that they are giving you them, despite there already being a prescription active) and then furlong it when they sign you home. This can cause your regular prescription to be cancelled if they forget to set a end-date for when they were proscribing it. User error is harder to fix; if not impossible.

I work as a pharmacy tech and regularly have to decipher handwritten prescriptions. We always try to double check with the doctor if we're unsure, but mistakes still happen unfortunately. One time the pharmacist brought out a large box of Movicol to a confused patient looking for her contraceptive pill, Marivol. She was cool about it thankfully!

Would you ever react to untold stories of the ER

My job consists of me going through med recs all day long. I know this pain well 😄

Thank you so much! I look forward to more medical meme reviews!

Thank you for being a doctor that writes clearly 😊

8 dislik--i mean 8 of the doctors have seen their own handwriting :P

*Also, you can tell the first one, the Paul-McCartney-birth day prescription one is old because his phone number is 110...*

As a nurse, I can confirm that you have good doctor handwriting. I’m proud that it can be read and actually sits on the lines!!!

I guess because any Med degree is so intense and involves a LOT of note taking, the students (future doctors) had to write FAST in order to keep up with all the information they were being given and simply didn't have the time to care about how neat their notes looked so long as they were readable. Which by the end of their 7 or 8 year long degree (including med-school) their handwriting would understandably be a mess. But because these days students mainly take notes on their laptops, it doesn't really affect their handwriting. So the current younger/new doctors generally tend to have normal handwriting I find.

Great video!! my Chemistry teacher had the habit where he just wrote Alu+a bunch of waves for Aluminum

Looks like the handwritten prescriptions we get at work. Loving the vlogs.

I really want to see you take a look at New Amsterdam. It's such a great series!

Love your videos! Hope there will be a new one soon :)

Love your videos and youre so easy to listen to. Im sure ill use examples from your videos in my sermons in future if thats ok :)

When I was at school, I had one teacher I'd accept comments about my handwriting from - though there was one time a teacher apologised to me that his toddler had been playing with pens - which explained why the red squiggles made even less sense than usual!

Oh yes, I was waiting for this!

You should react 2 more med memes. They're hilarious AF!

Doctor, please spell the word "medicine" neatly! Doctor: is that a challenge?

I met you through Cells at Work. I am now subscribed Listening to you is relaxing and also awesome. Hearing some latin "Oculus Dexter" was also nice. Also "The Mickey" taken out on us, in the US, is see as "Damicky" not sure why. Weird.

What happens to me is the faster I have to write, the more my handwriting suffers in terms of readability. As a teacher, I often have to decipher what kids write from context, or comparing to other parts of their text to see what letter something is. Feels a bit like detective work

Yay im learning more important things thanks Dr Hope. Plus, I find these videos funny. I have no idea how anyone can understand that writing if you are not a doctor that's just wow.

Hey Dr. Hope! Will could you break down the science of MEV-1 virus from Contagion? Since you're a pathology nerd, I think you'll LOVE it.

That second one that you called flatlining looks like the handwriting that my maths teacher had when I was in secondary school, lol.

Nice stuff man

In a clinic I used to work, there was a doctor that liked to handwrite the request forms and it was so difficult to read. Even the receptionist sometimes brought his request form in to ask us for help, it was like playing a puzzle game lol PS. love the clean shaven you.

FUN FACT: It doesn't happen so often now, but back in the day, in China. Hospitals would develop their own writing system, so prescriptions written by the doctor would look like gibberish or drawing to the patient, but the hospital pharmacy can read them, it's like a code. So the patient won't just take the prescription to a private pharmacy (which is much cheaper). Around the same period of time, it costs roughly 50-75 cents US to see a doctor, so the hospitals were making money by selling overpriced medicines. And doctors were reprimanded for telling the patients what drugs they were prescribing, because that takes away the hospital's profit. Nowadays everything runs on the social health care system, so it doesn't matter where you get the drug, so now it's all typed and printed. Some fancy hospitals also can give you a PDF prescription.

When I started work as a clinical coder in a UK general hospital in the 1990s we had to work just from Discharge Letters from Medical wards (the other specialities allegedly letting us have the notes as well) which were always hand-scrawled and frequently contained abbreviations unique to the Dr/dept concerned. Endoscopies were the great though; printed, different colours for gastro, colorectal and lap chole, and pretty pictures of all the bits.

How about doing an episode of MASH? There are quite a few scenes in surgery, as well as puzzles about how to solve a treatment with limited or no resources.

On a roll there Doctor Hope 🤗 4 vids within 3 weeks ⭐️⭐️⭐️

4.000th like! love round numbers as I love your videos!

I honestly thought it was some secret code made to not be replicated and falsificated

Dr Hope is taking things to a whole new level!

I swear it’s just a way to be able to argue against malpractice if something goes wrong there’s wiggle room in deciphering

1:48 I think the explanation for that one is that it's in pharmacist shorthand and that's how the other person knew instantly what it meant.

You should react to casualty or holby city

I used to have better handwriting at varsity. Bad handwriting happens because we see so many patients and have little time in between note taking...but is still something to be mindful about. Just a shout out to Dr Hope, subbed recently and a fan of your work. Having watched your videos regarding Cells at Work, it brought back so many memories of my Anatomy & Physiology lectures during my first year. You remind me a lot of my Anatomy and Physiology lecturer, minus the vegetables lol. Someday, PLEASE decide to become a lecturer in this field, you really bring life to the subject matter.

Was there like some cases of misdosing (is that even a word?) from misreading the prescription?

This video is hilarious! One week during nursing school a few months ago we sat down and spent 2 hours going through doctors notes and trying to read them 😂

here in the philippines, we still use Grains for some meds like Phenobarbital & NaHCO3. gXXX is grains 30 (650mg x3) ... it says: one every 4 hours if needed for pain.

2nd prescription - 2:28 - The first medication is to be given at a dosage of 4 mg. ORALLY immediately (stat. - means "immediately" or "at once")

Should see my last discharge letter from hospital, can't even type that properly, it's got missing letters hahaha. Great content as always, just what I needed after coming out of hospital yet again

A friend who was a dispenser way back told me she finally deciphered a line on a prescription which had been round all the local pharmacies - 'Temporary Resident'. And I was phoned fairly regularly by our department secretary typing EEG reports: 'I can't read this word; can you tell me what it says'. Not my report, and she was in an office the opposite end of the building.

I asked my mom one time why doctors have bad handwriting. She said, "some doctors have good handwriting like me." She writes in some weird circly things 💀

Last time I was at vet (I'm vet tech student) he wrote the list of topics for me to write about and his cursive handwriting was pretty nice. That left me wondering if vets write better than docs.

It very likely that they are using the gregg shorthand, which makes writing way faster, often used by accountant and I know most chinese doctor uses it.

I’ve heard the paracetamol one was some sort of short hand that is used. Don’t know how true that is

You haven't played a game in a while Dr. Hope... We need A GAME!

I'm looking for Dr.Mike's reaction to hand writing, but saw this one instead. I don't mind though, it's still hilarious 😂😂😂

Interesting video. I am used to seeing SID as once a day or QD instead of OD.

Question, you say that you are a junior doctor so what are the levels of being a doctor? Do you needed to grind for experience by doing sutures?

Watching this video was the perk I needed in my day. Thank ye kindly, good sir! lol

I remember taking the recommended dosage of codine for my wisdom teeth that where erupting, I felt like I had a extremely bad cold and I'd sooner have the toothache (didn't help I was learning to drive too at the time).

you wrote RR:30. does that mean the middle arterial pressure? Because we always write two numbers for the Bloodpressure

Maybe it's not just medical doctor's. some of our professors who got their PhD got this terrible handwriting going on

Upvoted before I watched even a second of this video. I love the idea.

I'm no doctor so I'll just have to ask...would there ever be a situation where a Doctor would write an advisory note suggesting an overdose? Because that to me sounds like something that would only show up in a diagnosis.

I'm currently in one year for Pharm degree and one difficult part of it is to read the irl prescriptions-

Revisiting this video because I brought it up in discussion with fellow P1 pharmacists at the college I've just enrolled in this year. It's comforting to know that even some doctors struggle with certain doctor's handwritings when we pharmacists have to deal with this on the regular. Future pharmacists, if you're ever unsure of the medication or amount, contact the doctor who wrote it. Never assume.

This video was therapeutic for me as a clinical (medical) coder who deciphers medical notes all day in my job. Especially your example note, excellent form there. Please come work out of my hospital some time, my job would be so much lovelier if this is what all our doctor notes looked like As a general trend, doctors newer to the field tend to write much more nicely. Fear the physician who has been in the job for 40+ years. Excellent and talented doctors, terrible handwriters. Newer doctors also tend to be friendlier when we have to swallow our coder pride and track them down on the ward to ask them what that word says In our local area, plastics are also main offenders when it comes to their scrawl. Not sure if this is a trend everywhere. But it's terribly frustrating when you're trying to decipher a hand surgery report and work out which of the 500 or so hand structures with a 3 letter acronym they're saying they sutured.

Used to work in pharmacy, a good tip is to try and transcript it. It helps your brain pattern match.

can you make video "doctor react to dr. stone anime and manga"!