CITATION — REFERENCE ENTRY
A prescription for death: Does doctors' illegible handwriting kill more than 7,000 patients annually? Is drinking alcohol a good cold cure? — The Straight Dope
- Key
- adams-straightdope-handwriting-deaths
- Authors
- Adams, Cecil
- Type
- webpage
- Container
- The Straight Dope
Raw CSL JSON
{
"URL": "https://www.straightdope.com/21343853/a-prescription-for-death-does-doctors-illegible-handwriting-kill-more-than-7-000-patients-annually-i",
"type": "webpage",
"title": "A prescription for death: Does doctors' illegible handwriting kill more than 7,000 patients annually? Is drinking alcohol a good cold cure?",
"author": [
{
"given": "Cecil",
"family": "Adams"
}
],
"accessed": {
"date-parts": [
[
2026,
9,
25
]
]
},
"container-title": "The Straight Dope"
}
Claims
-
The widely repeated figure of 7,000 annual US deaths from doctors' handwriting actually refers to deaths from all medication errors of any kind, traced to a 1998 Lancet paper via Institute of Medicine reports.
"7,000 U.S. deaths result from all medication-related errors of any sort, inside and outside hospitals, and not just those tied to poor penmanship"
Available in