Illegible prescription still remains a significant problem in India

Illegible prescription writing by doctors has been a major issue the pharmacists as well as the patients in the country have been facing for a long time now. Even though the Medical Council of India (MCI) and the state medical councils have repeatedly been directing the doctors fraternity to write the names of medicines legibly in capital letters with preference to generic names, it is a fact that majority of the medical professionals in the country are still adhering to their conventional style of prescription writing. In our country doctors are well aware that most of the patients do not understand much about medicines prescribed to them. Most of the patients would present their doctor's prescription to the chemists and quietly walk home with the drugs dispensed by the pharmacists. It is well known that the chemist's shop is usually managed by a matriculate boy who fills in for the mandatory pharmacist. As if the general chaos at the chemist's counters was not sufficient, pharmaceutical companies have added fuel to the fire with confusing brand names. As an expert aptly said, most doctors' handwriting does not look much different from an electrocardiograph tracing.

It is under this background, the MCI had issued guidelines on September 28, 2016, making it mandatory for the doctors to write the medicines in capital letters. According to the amendment made to the MCI (Professional Conduct, Etiquette, and Ethics) Regulation 2002, the MCI had made it compulsory for the physicians to prescribe the names of the drugs in capital letters, in continuation to the same it has also made it mandatory to prescribe both generic and branded drug names while writing prescriptions to the patients. The MCI guidelines were meant to prevent wrong dispensing, medication error and ensure patient compliance.

Prescriptions legibly written with generic name and in capital letters would have reduced dangers to public health because of medication errors. It is common knowledge that illegible prescription leads to wrong dispensing, wrong medication and toxicities, claims lives or affects health and huge monetary loss for follow up treatments as well as hospitalization. The MCI wanted the medical professionals with instructions through concerned authorities to write the drug names in capital letters with preference to their chemical names. But the fact remains that the doctors neither use capital letters nor indicate the generic names.

The dispensers in the pharmacies are bewildered to decipher the brand names being written by the physicians. It is alleged that the medical professionals prefer the advice of medical companies to the directions of the government as regards their prescription writing. They want to promote the brands, but the brand names are also not written clearly for the pharmacists to read. As a result, dispensing errors happen occasionally. There were reports that some pharmacists associations are planning to move court against illegible prescription writing by the doctors. The association wanted to get a permanent direction to the doctors' community on the issue as several dispensing errors are happening in hospital and community pharmacies across the state because of the illegible prescription writing by doctors. The association cites three recent incidents of dispensing errors which have occurred in some hospitals because of illegible writing of drug names by medical professionals.

It is a fact that the pharmacists at the medical shops face difficulties in reading some of the names of the medicines written by the doctors, especially some specialists who write only the first two letters and the last two letters with a long line in the middle. This kind of unreadable manner of prescription writing makes the pharmacists at the hospital and community pharmacies confused which leads to dispensing errors and wrong delivery of medicines.

There were also reports recently that because of the incomprehensible scribbling of drug names by the doctors, the pharmacists in government as well as private pharmacies are forced to spend time in social media to grasp the medical terms through peer-to-peer chats or by telephonic conversations after forwarding the baffling prescriptions to social networking platforms of the pharmacist community. It is sure that when medicines are prescribed in capital letters, every literate person can read it and it will no more remain secret between the doctor and the pharmacist. Patients or others can make sure that correct medicine has been dispensed. So, there will be no chance of confusion. Of course, it is a preventable medical error. The government should now take a serious note of this menace.

(The author is freelance

journalist with varied experience

in different fields)