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Court’s prescription for doctors! | Healthcare in India | Scoop.it

From www.thehindu.com - August 1, 2014 3:20 AM

Why every medical practitioner across the nation writes Illegible way on prescriptions?.

No government organisation had an answer for this and how it came in to practice, but finally the stage is set to curb the practice due to a sustained campaign of a Nalgonda based pharmacist as Medical Council of India General Body had resolved to issue guidelines asking the practitioners to use only capital letters on prescription.

The pharmacist, Chilukuri Paramathma, has said that he approached the High Court, Hyderabad, for banning the usage of present style of writing as it is leading to confusion in pharmacists. Unable to understand the prescriptions, he said that there are so many instances of pharmacists giving wrong medicine to patients that even led to disasters. He explained such an instance saying that a pharmacist working with a pharmacy chain store in Vidyanagar in Hyderabad had given ‘Tegrital’ Tablet instead of ‘Trental’ tablet to a pregnant woman as he misunderstood the prescription.

The ‘Trental’ tablet was intended for better blood circulation in pregnant woman, but Tegrital tablet is meant for abortion. As she got aborted after taking the tablet, that had turned into a big issue. Mr. Paramathma had gathered such 100 tablet names looks like homonyms in English which were presented before the High Court through a Public Interest Litigation.

A two-member Bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Joythi Senguptha and Justice Sanjay Kumar had taken up the case for hearing on 24, February, 2014 and issued directions asking the Medical Council of India (MCI)and other stakeholders to take appropriate action.

The MCI had decided to issue guidelines asking the doctors to write the prescriptions only in capital letters in a general body meeting held on March 28. The decision of MCI along with a draft notification has been sent for Centre’s approval on June 9 this year. Once the Centre gives it’s nod, every medical practitioner in India will have to follow the guidelines to be issued by the Centre.

more at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/courts-prescription-for-doctors/article6268646.ece

MCI tells doctors: Use block letters when you write prescriptions | Healthcare in India | Scoop.it

From indianexpress.com - February 23, 2014 3:06 AM

The days of doctors’ prescriptions being parallel lines of illegible scrawls punctuated by the odd circle to indicate dosage, may soon be a thing of the past.

The executive committee of the Medical Council of India has decided that doctors should only write prescriptions in capital letters.

If the prescription also includes other remarks such as dietary advice or recommended tests, then at least the drug names and dosages should be written clearly in capitals, the committee has ruled.

Letters to this effect will soon be sent to all medical colleges, MCI chairperson Dr Jayshreeben Mehta told The Indian Express Monday.

“The executive committee has just passed this proposal. The committee unanimously felt that drug names and dosages are at times not clearly written in prescriptions causing a lot of confusion among both chemists and patients. That is why we have decided that all prescriptions should be in capital letters. Once the order comes out, it will be sent to all medical colleges,” Mehta said.

Committee members, sources said, made a strong pitch for all-caps prescriptions on the ground that misreading even a single letter can alter the name of a drug dramatically and lead to disastrous consequences for the patient.

Doctors have welcomed the move but health ministry sources said they had no information about the decision.

more at http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/mci-tells-doctors-use-block-letters-when-you-write-prescriptions/

Court’s prescription for doctors!

MCI tells doctors: Use block letters when you write prescriptions