Curse of Illegible Handwriting

When there are many doctors running an outpatient clinic, and the same patient is seen by different doctors on different days, illegible handwriting can become a great problem. This is the situation in a civic or government run hospital. As head of the service, I have to see all patients who need a senior to see them, and I also see a lot of others in the course of the clinic. When the previous records are not legible, I get stuck. Sometimes I have to ask my resident doctors what the written records are. They usually can make out what I cannot, like a pharmacist can read doctors' prescriptions when doctors cannot do so. There was one particular resident who would not improve her handwriting despite measures like counseling, sweet talk, admonition, and threats of disciplinary action. Finally I did a Google search and found out the reasons for an illegible handwriting. They are listed below.

1. doesn't have the inclination or time to write legibly.
2. laziness.
3. thinking faster than fingers can move to write.
4. emotional stress.
5. hysteria.
6. dishonesty: hiding intentions behind poor writing.
7. an illness resulting in muscular impairment.
8. alcohol or drug abuse impairing physical or mental vitality.

I think reasons 1 to 4 were most likely in the given case, 5 a remote possibility, and 5 to 8 unlikely. The good part of this exercise was that I knew the reasons behind the bad handwriting (while I had believed the reason was genetic, poor training or bad luck). The bad part was that there was no solution to the problem. The only thing that could be done was to call that resident every time I could not read what she had written, trying all the time not to get stressed.