The Importance Of Signature

No matter what job are you doing, a signature can be always be a dangerous thing to write on a paper. Especially if you have a certain amount of power to or rank that can approved something with your signature. For a doctor, our signature can be used to prescribe medication to a patient, or medical certificate, medical reports, sometimes if you are involved in management, your signature can be used to approve payment or et cetera.

Once in a while, there will be a headline in the news regarding doctors who abused their signature to give medical certificate or medical reports, some are their fault, sometime it can be forged by irresponsible person to be abused.

We were told since the beginning of our career as a doctor, to protect our signature and chop above anything else we have. Since becoming a doctor, your signature now has a value compare to others. Not just doctor, engineer, lawyer, people in the administration, all are warned regarding this 'power'.

With great powers, comes great responsibility (spiderman!?). Sometimes, people just suddenly appear before us handing us a lot of thing to sign. Counter signing.

"Doctor, please counter sign this.."

"Boss, can you counter sign this?"

Most of the time, we are too busy to bother about this. The easy way to do is, to trust that person, and sign it so that we can chase them away quickly so we can continue our work. Those we don't trust, don't simply sign. Those who do, just sign here and there.


NO! This is what we should not do. I will never do that and no one should. I will always ask a simple question before I sign it.

"What are these for?"

"If I signed, what happen?"

We need to know that. Do you remember insurance agent? They always ask us to sign without reading the full policy. Most of the time we do it, but what happen later? Everyone experienced it. There will be something unfair (must be) with the term and condition. Who do we blamed? Ourselves.

For every signature that we give, we should take responsibility on it. So please make sure that we know what we are signing for. It could lead us to court, prison, or the most suffering condition we will ever imagine in the future. It's better to prevent it rather than regret it later.


So for those young doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, businessmen and businesswomen, please remember that with great power in our signature, came a very big responsibility.

Do not simply sign on everything...



* This post does not look significant because most of the time people already knew this. This is too basic, but perhaps there are still some people who does not. Who knows...