Can you read this Prescription ???

There were days when teachers used to scold us for bad handwriting at school citing it as doctor’s handwriting. I was unable to decipher the exact meaning of it at that time. Days gone, I am getting the exact taste of that sarcasm.

When I started my professional career as a Hospital Pharmacist the first thing I had to do was to understand the code language [ doctor’s way of writing medications] in the prescription. Now after more than two years of work at hospital pharmacy the cycle is repeating and for how long I am unsure. 

During day to day encounter with such prescriptions, I have seen really bad to very good written prescriptions. Errors are bound to happen and I have experienced it. Sometimes wrong medicine was prescribed which I corrected by consulting the doctor. I have received some prescriptions with wrong dosing issues [ ciprofloxacin 200mg two times a day, ciprofloxacin 500mg three times a day, azithromycin 500mg three times a day and so on] but corrected them through doctor consultation. I sent back those prescriptions containing narcotics but without name of the prescriber and the date. Some prescriptions were so bad that I got confused whether the drug should be taken for certain days, week or months. So yup, we can minimize the errors and we are only the right person to do so.

I wonder why doctors don’t think it important to write the prescriptions correctly and neatly. Patients waste their entire day to meet the physicians. Doctor fill up the prescription but what is its use if it cannot be understood by the pharmacist who dispense the medicines to the patients. A mere change in letter can change the medicines given to the patients. Then what if wrong medicines are dispensed. Aren’t we playing with lives of people. Are doctors so much busy that they cannot even write it clearly what patient need to take in order to cure the diseases. 

Grow up, I still remember a quote by Dr. Vikash during the Pharmacovigilance training at Yak and Yeti hotel “gone are the days where doctors with bad handwriting were thought to be good doctors. Reality is if a doctor cannot write a medicine properly then he/she cannot be considered as good one. They are the bad ones’. I agree with this statement.

In the present context most of the overdosing and medication errors are due to bad prescription writing and wrong dispensing. The confusion with LASA medications and guess work by the pharmacist is another reason. We have read the characteristics of the good prescription. We are the one to dispense correctly and we are responsible for anything wrong that happen due to medications. So we must be careful while reading the prescriptions. 

Why not we send the confusing and badly written prescriptions back to the doctors or we can contact the doctor and clarify the issue. We cannot repeat mistake just by guessing wrong. If you get the prescriptions with narcotics without details of the prescriber and the patients, send back. It’s not your fault. 

Now time has come to be good at writing prescriptions. The medication errors that we are getting today can only be resolved when doctors give some extra seconds to write neat prescriptions. Doctors should at least consider writing the name of drug, dose and the frequency of taking the medicines correctly. This is directly linked with people’s lives. What about try E-prescriptions. This can minimize errors by 80 % I guess. On the other side of the coin, we should update ourselves on handling prescriptions. Training might help this out. Reading leaflets and searching about the daily used medicines on internet will enrich you. 

The diagnosis and treatment that a doctor does is finally complete when the patient gets correct medications and gets cured. Otherwise everything is of waste. So pharmacist should play a role in controlling bad dispensing. Never guess the medicines. Say no to bad prescriptions.