In a move that caught physicians and pharmacists off-guard, a new Washington state law went into effect this month that requires prescriptions to be printed, typed or electronically entered in order to be filed and filled. The law bans cursive writing.

According to local newspapers, the law can be "blamed" on a pharmacist at a state poison center who has been campaigning for 27 years to get such a law enacted.

Although physician writing is always criticized and has become a standard cliche, it has triggered many lawsuits and resulted in many JCAHO efforts aimed at avoiding prescription errors.

Legible does not mean several of us standing around the nursing station can figure out what it was supposed to say -- it means that someone not familiar with your writing can read what you wrote on the first attempt.

Washington news reports cite up to a 32 per cent illegible rate for cursive writing on prescriptions.

Now, I would strongly favor a similar law for medical records. After reading thousands of records, I would put the rate of illegible records at close to 60%. These illegible records often cause good care to be hard to prove -- and adverse verdicts result.

There was a time when I was able to rely on good nursing notes to help clarify the physician's notes -- that time has passed, however, as nursing handwriting has deteriorated to the point where it rivals the worst physician writing.

While it is humorous to some, the bottom line is that poor handwriting causes or contributes to patient injury and malpractice liability. Electronic Medical Records will still have a lot of issues, but handwriting will not be one of them -- that alone is justification for prompt conversion to EMR.