If you go to see your doctor and need a prescription, you will see his or her fingers flying over the keyboard and in seconds a prescription form will slip out of the printer. Very different from the old days when your GP scribbled something illegible on a pad of prescription forms. But it occurred to me that if I was a doctor the prescription would still be illegible or worse still, the patient would receive entirely the wrong drug.
I am keyboard dyslexic or perhaps dyspraxic is a better word. If I typed this without the benefit of going back to fill in missing letters and reassemble words, you would read or perhaps red something like this:
When I was at hiihg school, place and time irreleant, hte system decrteed that after first year pupils had to decide betwenn a commecrial or pfofessional copurse.
At high school we had to decide whether to take the professional or commercial course in second year. I was twelve years old. I knew I never wanted to work in an office and learning typing and shorthand would be boring. None of us could have guessed then that in the future everybody would be using keyboards.
My handwriting is untidy, but I can spell, or thought I could. When you trace your pen across paper you write one letter at a time. On the keyboard your brain races ahead, followed by your fingers, typing the end of the word before the middle. A friend regularly types reports at work about ‘clinets’, so I know I’m not alone. With my brain and hands under the illusion that I am a typist, speed results in many wrong letters being hit. It is a wonder that I managed to write my first novel 240,000 words long.
But back to the doctors. Prescriptions are not the only words your doctor types while you sit in front of his or her desk. Many patients complain doctors do not look at them, let alone listen, as they are too busy looking at their notes on the computer screen. I sympathise with the doctor, I could not type and interact with a Human Being at the same time. Due to the angle of the screen the patient cannot read their medical details. My doctor types symptoms and advice given onto records that will be stored for ever, he never seems to falter, though perhaps if I did look I would see a jumble of letters.
Janet Gogerty
http://www.starfishpc.co.uk/gogerty-janet.htm
I have been writing compulsively for eight years; my shortest story is six words exactly and my longest 235,000 words approximately. My short stories have appeared on line, on paper and in audio. My four novels can be found on Amazon Kindle.
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