Most doctors have bad handwriting. Do they do that on purpose?

I have often wondered the same thing. How do the pharmacists know what the prescription says or do they actually have to call the doctors office to see what it is? How do they know that is the actual doctors signature? So many questions and no answers I'm afraid.

No - they do NOT do that on purpose. I guess it comes out of the fact that they write quite fast and the drug names are a little complicated. I wish medical colleges also had a short course on handwriting though!
Doctors should be able to print out their prescriptions to make it clearer - a simple idea that a lot of them use now.
As for the R symbol it is actually Rx. It is supposed to mean "Take thou"This is an extract from wikipedia
"The symbol "Rx" meaning "prescription" is a transliteration of a symbol resembling a capital R with a cross on the diagonal (?).
There are various theories about the origin of this symbol - some note its similarity to the Eye of Horus[2], others to the ancient symbol for Jupiter, both gods whose protection may have been sought in medical contexts. Alternatively, it may be intended as an abbreviation of the Latin "recipe"[citation needed], the imperative form of "recipere", "to take"[2], and it is quite possible that more than one of these factors influenced its form. Literally, "Recipe" means simply "Take...." and when a medical practitioner writes a prescription beginning with "Rx", he or she is completing the command. This was probably originally directed at the pharmacist who needed to take a certain amount of each ingredient to compound the medicine, rather than at the patient who must "take" the medicine, in the sense of consuming it.
The word "prescription" can be decomposed into "pre" and "script" and literally means, "to write before" a drug can be prepared. Those within the industry will often call prescriptions simply "scripts"."

well before i was thinking the same way. but when my child was born her pediatrician has broke all those rules har har har. our pedia has a good and readable hand writting it is easy to read and easy to understand as well. but most of the doctors me and my wife experience has bad hand writtings. maybe because they are all tired of writting during those days that they are still studying har har har

i don't think it is anything intentional by the doctors. many people have bad handwriting and the busier the person is the faster and sloppier they write. celebrities autographs are often a scribble. the pharmacists know the ingredients and are so familiar with them that they can make it out. and they may have seen the doctors handwriting enough to that they can interpret their writing.

It's in Latin, so most folks, except docs and pharms, can't read it.

My doc has all his come out of the computer, nicely typed. It saves any mixups.

I think so. I don't know why the doctors will have so ugly handwritings and it's so hard to identify the words. That's so bad that I don't know what my doctor wrote down. And I always wonder whether another doctor can recognize these words.

I love China