In a bid to protect budding doctors from any unpleasant situation they might find themselves in future because of illegible prescriptions, a State-run medical college in Madhya Pradesh has come up with an interesting idea.
Under the proposed plan, graduate and post-graduate students of the Indore-based Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) Medical College will be trained by an expert for improving their writing skills, so that they can write prescriptions and medical documents in a legible manner.
MGM Dean Jyoti Bindal said on Sunday that the college would rope in a specialist to help improve handwriting skills of the medicos, so that they can write prescriptions that are legible and easy to understand.
“We will also organise a competition among the students to write prescriptions in clear and beautiful letters,” Dr. Bindal said.
In a hurry
Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Medical Science University (MPMSU) Vice-Chancellor Ravishankar Sharma said that the reason for illegible prescriptions is hurry in which the doctors write. He said some doctors finish writing prescriptions in just 30 seconds.
Dr. Sharma suggested that doctors take at least three minutes to write the drug order. “I suggest the doctors to write symptoms of patients, description of the disease and prescribe medicines in clear words.”
Dr. Sharma, however, does not agree with the public criticism of illegible prescriptions. “All doctors cannot be expected to write prescriptions beautifully, but yes what is written should be readable,” he said.
Patients often face problems in purchasing medicines from pharmacists due to such undecipherable prescriptions. Many a times, badly written medico-legal documents hamper investigation by the police. In some instances in the past, patients and their family members had faced issues in claiming medical insurance due to poor handwriting of the doctors.
