Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Oct 2017)
The death of ink: the value of typing skills as an addition to the medical school curriculum
Abstract
Saiful Miah,1 Hashim U Ahmed21Department of Urology, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Charing Cross Hospital, 2Imperial College London, London, UKWe read with great interest the article by Malik on the importance of writing skills, which has been highlighted as one of the four competencies that all medical students should possess as future doctors.1 Malik’s article also stated that “first and foremost”writing in a legible manner is imperative for good clinical practice.1While we wholeheartedly agree with these statements, one potentially overlooked skill that we predict will overtake the requirement of legible writing skills within a generation of doctors is typing proficiency. Decades of investment and development of electronic health records (EHRs) have resulted in a greater implementation of this tool globally.2 EHRs have been shown through use of reminders, electronic order sets and other means to improve reliability of performance of many basic tasks in acute, preventive and chronic medical care.2View the original paper by Malik.
