there is an old joke that doctors go to school to learn how to read doctors' handwriting. there is truth in the joke-computer analysis of the handwriting of medical staff show that doctors' writing is a lot worse than that of nurses and administrative staff. Maybe it's because doctors are always under pressure of time that they write very fast. the habit start when they are medical students and gets worse as time passes.
computer analysis shows that generally, medical staff are careful with numbers. However, they tend to form letters of the alphabet badly. When drug names look very similar, bad handwriting can mean patients get the wrong medicine. A young girl nearly died when she was given Methimazole instead of Metolazole (one is for high blood pressure and the other is for thyroid problems). And in 1999, an America cardiologist, Ramachandra Kolluru, wrote a prescription so badly that the pharmacist gave the a patient the wrong medicine. This time the patient did die and a court fined the doctor 225,000 US dollars.