From the Trainer
Assistant Director (GP), South East Scotland
E-mail: Judith.Richardson{at}nes.scot.nhs.uk
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Spelling is not my strong point and for many years as a school child, medical student and junior doctor, I developed a style of handwriting which was legible (or so I thought) but ‘fudged’ the spelling of words of which I was uncertain. Then along came computers and spell checkers; however, as the following poem illustrates they have their drawbacks:
Eye halve a spelling chequerIt came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
(Author unknown)
The obvious problems apart, however, on the whole, I think spell checkers, especially ones with medical dictionaries, are a real asset. Why then do the clinical software systems we use in the practice not have a spell checker? This first vexed me and my two finger typing when we became paper light some 2 years ago. I could no longer fudge my poor spelling with illegible handwriting and it was exposed for all to see. I take heart in the fact that my colleagues seem to make as many errors as I do and hide behind the poor excuse of typos (typographical errors). The quality of my electronic clinic notes has further declined as we have recently moved to a new clinical system and as I struggle to get to grips with it, I have less time to be careful of my spelling.
The poor quality of these clinical entries was really brought home to me today when I was penning a reply to the ombudsman (a story for another day) and had to refer back to not only mine but also my colleagues clinical records. The entries although adequate in terms of content were full of typos and spelling mistakes. Reviewing these notes, I felt as a consequence they looked unprofessional and would give a poor impression of the practice to an outsider, certainly they did not reflect what I feel is the high quality of care that we deliver. This could so easily be improved by the use of spell checkers in these software programs.
I have recently been rereading Peter Tate's excellent book ‘The Doctor's Communication Handbook’ (a highly recommended read) and in this he suggests that doctors should learn to touch type to decrease the potential barrier of the computer to good communication. I think there is another good reason to learn to touch type (from a personal observational study in my practice), that is that those GPs who can touch-type seem to make less errors in their clinical entries. Now there is a potential audit project for a keen GPStR!
- So, what have I learnt from this?
- That we could really do with a spell checker for our clinical software systems.
- That touch-typing might be a way of not only speeding up recording clinical entries but also potentially improve patient communication and the quality of the entries.
That I am not alone in making spelling mistakes and typos.
Having learnt these valuable lessons, I certainly have a personal learning need to learn to touch type which I can add to my PDP. The practice also has some needs and I will be on the phone to the software supplier tomorrow to ask why we have not got a spell checker.
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