Pravat Ranjan Beura

DOCTORS TO WRITE THE PRESCRIPTIONS IN CAPITAL LETTERS ONLY The doctors are here to prescribe the sick to be physically fit. And the prescriptions for the sick are most of the time illegible. They prescribe and dispose off the patients very quickly with little advice on dosage and related aspects, Thereafter such prescriptions are to be read and interpreted by the pharma-shops to provide the prescribed medicines and dosage as presumed through prescriptions. But it so happens that the prescribed information in most cases are so illegible that the pharmacists sometimes get confused and provide wrong medicines. There are many medicines produced by many manufacturers and single alphabet can differ the medicine, which can be proved fatal to the patient. For example, “BUSCOPAN” & “BUSUPHAN”, where the former is for stomach pain and the later is for treatment of Cancer. Another example: “HIFEN” for ENT infections, but “HIPEN” for systemic infection. There are many such examples. This illegible handwritings put the pharmacists to difficulty, and for this reason they ask the person, who presents the prescription for the medicines about the disease to cross check the confirmation for the medicines they provide. This illegibility of the prescriptions lead to confusion and at certain point of time it was placed before a court to direct the concerned regulatory bodies to issue guidelines on the issue. One pharmacist, Mr Chilukuri Paramathma from Nalgonda district, presently in Telengana State, first made a request in 2013 to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India to direct the professional doctors to write the prescriptions in legible manner, preferably in capital letters only. The plea was made as names of many medicines are synonymous and illegibility of the prescriptions lead the pharmacists to give wrong medicines and in the effect the patients suffer. Such request was forwarded to the Medical Council of India (MCI), but the response could not be obtained. Hence Mr. Paramathma sought a response directly from the MCI and received a reply as “There is no such guideline in place over the usage of writing prescriptions”. This response made the pharmacist to approach the Andhra Pradesh High Court at Hyderabad for banning the present style of writing by the doctors, which leads to confusion and sometimes confrontation to the pharmacists. Being unable to decipher the illegible prescriptions, pharmacists give wrong medicines and the patients are put to disaster. He put the real case before the Court, which happened in an outlet of a chain store in Vidyanagar in Hyderabad, in the premises of “Durgabai Deshmuk Hospital”, where due to illegible handwriting the pharmacist gave MICROPROST 200 instead of MICROGEST 200 for a pregnant lady. The MICROPROST 200 is for abortion, whereas the MICROGEST 200 is intended for better blood circulation. This wrong medication led to abortion and it turned out to be a big issue in the hospital. To make the court believe the pharmacist‟s plea, Mr Paramathma had collected names of about 100 medicines look like homonyms in English. The case was heard before two member bench in AP High Court comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and Justice Sanjay Kumar. They delivered the judgement on 24/02/2014 and issued direction to the medical Council of India (MCI) and other stake holders to take appropriate action. After about two years, on 28/03/2016 MCI deliberated and decided in the general body meeting to issue guidelines asking doctors to write the prescriptions only in capital letters. And a draft notice was sent to the Govt. of India on 09/06/2016 for approval. After about 2 years, the government has now notified amendment to the „Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002‟ that makes it mandatory for all doctors to prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters. Source : [1] Doctor prescription should now be ‘Legible’ and preferably be in ‘Capital Letters’ By Rakesh Dubbudu [2] Andhra Pradesh Court’s prescription for doctors! By Karnakar Reddy (The Hindu)