The Indian Court tells doctors to fix their handwriting

At a time when most people use keyboards to write, does the handwriting really matter?

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

The jokes about the notorious bad handwriting of many doctors who can only be deciphered by pharmacists are common in India, as around the world. But the last commandment, emphasizing the importance of clear handwriting, comes from the Supreme Court in Pengjab and Hariana recently, who says that “a legible medical prescription is a fundamental right” as it can distinguish between life and death.

The court order came in a case that has nothing to do with the written word. It included allegations of rape, infidelity and forgery by a woman and justice Jasgurzerphet Singh Puri hears the man’s request for a guarantee.

The woman claims that the man has taken money from her promises government work, conducts false interviews with her and has sexually exploited her.

The defendant denied the allegations – he said they had consensus relations and the case was brought for a dispute over money.

Justice Puri said when he looked at the medical -led report – written by a government doctor who examined the woman – he found it incomprehensible.

“It shook the conscience of this court, since even a word or letter was not legible,” he wrote in the order.

The BBC has seen a copy of the solution that includes the report and a prescription on two pages, which shows the dishonest scratch of the doctor.

“At a time when technology and computers are easily accessible, it is shocking that government doctors still write recipes by hand that cannot be read by anyone except maybe some chemists,” writes justice cigars.

The court asked the government to include handwriting lessons in the Medical School Curriculum and to place a two -year graphical line for the deployment of digitalized recipes.

Until this happens, all doctors should clearly write the recipes in capital letters, Puri said justice.

Dilip Bhanusali, president of the Indian Medical Association, who has more than 330,000 doctors as members, told the BBC that they were ready to help to find a solution to the problem.

In cities and larger cities, according to him, doctors have moved to digital recipes, but it is very difficult in rural and small cities to get clear recipes.

“It is a well -known fact that many doctors have bad handwriting, but this is because most medical doctors are very busy, especially in overcrowded state hospitals,” he says.

“We recommended that our members follow government instructions and write recipes in bold letters that should be readable for both patients and chemists. A doctor who sees seven patients a day can do it, but if you see 70 patients a day, you can’t do it,” he adds.

This is not the first time the Indian court called the doctors handwriting. Past cases include the Supreme Court in the State of Odisha which flag The “zigzag style of writing by doctors” and judges in the Supreme Court of Allahabad, who mourn For “reports written with such a worn handwriting that they are not decipherable.”

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

But experts say that the emphasis on their handwriting is not about aesthetics or convenience, but for a medical recipe that leaves room for ambiguity or misinterpretation, can have serious – even tragic – consequences.

According to 1999 report The Institute of Medicine (IOM) medical errors cause at least approximately 44,000 preventive deaths a year in the United States, of which 7,000 are due to a washed handwriting.

More recently in a scotland woman suffered chemical injuries After she was wrongly given a cream for erectile dysfunction for a dry eye condition.

The UK health authorities have admitted that “drug mistakes cause horrific levels of harm and death” and added that “the introduction of electronic prescription systems in more hospitals can reduce errors by 50%.”

India does not have stable data on the harm caused by bad handwriting, but in the world’s most populated mis -reading recipes in the past has led to health emergencies and many deaths.

Have This much reported case To a woman suffering from convulsions after taking medicine for diabetes, which had a similar sound name of an analgesic who was prescribed.

Chilukuri Paramathama, who runs a pharmacy in the city of Nalganda in southern Indian state of Telangana, told the BBC that in 2014 he submitted a petition for public interest in the High Court in Hyderabad after reading news reports of a three -year -old.

His campaign, looking for a complete ban on manuscript recipes, bear fruit when in 2016 the Medical Council of India ordered “every doctor should prescribe medicines with common names legible and preferably in capital letters”.

In 2020, Junior Minister of Health in India, Ashvini Kumar Chuma Chuma heard, told parliament that medical authorities in the countries “were empowered to take disciplinary action against a doctor to violate the order.”

But almost a decade later, Mr Chilukuri and other pharmacists say that poorly written recipes continue to arrive at their stores. Chilukuri sent a number of recipes to the BBC he has seen in the last few years that he can’t even decipher.

Ravindra Khandelwal, CEO of Dhanwantary – one of Kolka City’s most famous pharmacies with 28 branches, covering cities, cities and villages in West Bengal and serving more than 4,000 clients a day – they sometimes say recipes that have borne them with the wretched.

“Over the years, we have seen a transition from a handwritten to print recipes in the cities, but in suburban and rural areas, most are still written by hand.”

According to him, his employees are very experienced and can decipher most of them to ensure that customers are receiving the right medicine.

“Even so, sometimes we have to call the doctors because it is very important for us to release the right medicine.”

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