The Indian Court tells doctors to repair their writing

At a time when most people use keyboards to write, is handwriting really important?

Yes, say the Indian courts, if the writer is a doctor.

The jokes around the notoriously bad writing of many doctors who can only be deciphered by pharmacists are common in India, as in the world. But the last order stressing the importance of clear writing recently came from the high court of Punjab and Haryana which declared that “readable medical prescription is a fundamental right” because it can make a difference between life and death.

The court order came in a case that had nothing to do with the word written. This involved allegations of rape, cheating and counterfeiting by a woman and judge Jasgurpreet Singh Puri heard the petition of man for deposit.

The woman had alleged that the man had taken her money to promise her a job of the government, led by false interviews with her and exploited her sexually.

The accused denied the accusations – he said he had a consensual relationship and that the case had been triggered due to a dispute on money.

Judge Puri said that when he had examined the medical -legal report – written by a government doctor who had examined the woman – he found her incomprehensible.

“It rocked the awareness of this court because even a word or a letter was not read,” he wrote in order.

The BBC has seen a copy of the judgment which includes the report and a prescription of two pages which shows the illegible scribble of the doctor.

“At a time when technology and computers are easily accessible, it is shocking that government doctors still write hand-to-hand prescriptions that cannot be read by anyone, except perhaps certain chemists,” wrote Puri judge.

The court asked the government to include writing lessons in the medical school study program and define a two -year calendar to deploy digitized orders.

Until this happens, all doctors must clearly write capital prescriptions, said Puri judge.

Dr. Dilip Bhanushali, president of the Indian Medical Association, which has more than 330,000 doctors as members, they were ready to help find a solution to the problem.

In cities and big cities, he says, doctors have moved to digital prescriptions, but it is very difficult in rural areas and small cities to obtain clear prescriptions.

“It is a well-known fact that many doctors have bad writing, but it is because most doctors are very busy, especially in overcrowded public hospitals,” he said.

“We have recommended that our members follow the government directives and to write prescriptions in daring letters that should be readable for patients and chemists. A doctor who sees seven patients per day can do so, but if you see 70 patients per day, you cannot do it,” he adds.

This is not the first time that an Indian court has called for the writing of botched doctors. The past cases include the high court of the state of Odisha which pointed out “the writing style in zigzag by the doctors” and the judges of the high court of Allahabad who deplored “reports written in such a shabby writing that they are not decipherable”.

However, studies have failed to support conventional wisdom that the handwriting of doctors is worse than the others.

But experts say that the emphasis on their writing does not concern aesthetics or convenience, but a medical prescription which leaves room for ambiguity or misinterpretation can have serious – even tragic consequences.

According to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine (OIM), medical errors have caused at least 44,000 avoidable deaths per year in the United States, 7,000 of which were attributable to sloppy handwriting.

More recently, in Scotland, a woman has undergone chemical injuries after having wrongly received erectile dysfunction cream for a condition of ocular drought.

Health authorities in the United Kingdom admitted that “drug errors cause appalling levels of damage and death” and added that “the deployment of electronic prescription systems in more hospitals could reduce errors by 50%”.

India has no robust data on damage caused by bad writing, but in the most populous country in the world, badly read in the past, has resulted in health in terms of health and many deaths.

There is this very reported case of a woman who suffered from convulsions after taking a drug for diabetes which had a name of survey similar to an analgesic which had been prescribed to him.

Chilukuri Paramathama, who heads a pharmacy in the city of Nalgonda, in the state of Southern Telangana India, told BBC that in 2014, he had filed a request for public interest before the High Court of Hyderabad after reading reports on a three -year -old child who died in the city of Norida after administering a bad injection for fever.

His campaign, seeking a complete ban on handwritten prescriptions, borne fruit while in 2016, the medical advice of India ordered that “each doctor prescribes drugs with generic names readably and preferably in capital letters”.

In 2020, India Minister of Health, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, told the Parliament that the medical authorities of the States “had been authorized to take disciplinary measures against a doctor to have violated the prescription.”

But almost a decade later, Mr. Chilukuri and other pharmacists say that seriously written prescriptions continue to arrive in their stores. Mr. Chilukuri has sent the BBC a certain number of orders he has seen in recent years that even he could not decipher.

Raviund Khandelwal, Dhanwantary CEO – one of Kolkata City’s best -known pharmacies with 28 branches covering the cities, cities and villages of Western Bengal and serving more than 4,000 customers per day – sometimes says prescriptions that come to the border on the Illumable.

“Over the years, we have seen a passage from the handwritten to the prescriptions printed in the cities, but in the suburban and rural areas, most are still handwritten.”

His staff, he says, is very experienced and capable of deciphering most of them to make sure that customers get the right medication.

“Despite this, we sometimes have to call doctors because it is very important for us to dispense the right medication.”

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