Indian court orders doctors to write legible prescriptions, citing patient safety

India's Punjab and Haryana High Court has called on doctors to ensure their handwriting is legible, underscoring the potential life-or-death consequences of unclear medical prescriptions.

The directive, issued by Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri, came in an unrelated case involving allegations of sexual exploitation, cheating, and forgery. While reviewing a medico-legal report submitted by a government doctor, the judge found the handwriting "incomprehensible," noting that "not even a word or a letter was legible."

"At a time when technology and computers are easily accessible, it is shocking that government doctors are still writing prescriptions by hand which cannot be read by anybody except perhaps some chemists," the court said in its order, according to the BBC.

Justice Puri instructed the government to introduce handwriting training in medical schools and mandated the rollout of digitised prescriptions within two years. Until that system is implemented, all doctors are required to write prescriptions clearly in capital letters.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), representing over 330,000 doctors, expressed support for measures to improve prescription clarity. Dr. Dilip Bhanushali, IMA president, told Reuters that while urban doctors increasingly use digital prescriptions, poor handwriting persists in rural areas due to heavy patient loads. "A doctor who sees seven patients a day can write clearly, but if you see 70 patients a day, it becomes difficult," he said.

The Punjab and Haryana order is not the first time Indian courts have highlighted this issue. Judges in Odisha and Allahabad states have previously criticized what they called "zigzag" and "shabby" medical handwriting.

Medical experts say the concern is not aesthetic. Ambiguous prescriptions can lead to serious errors, including incorrect dosages or entirely wrong medications. A 1999 U.S. Institute of Medicine report attributed 7,000 of an estimated 44,000 annual preventable deaths to poor handwriting. In Scotland, a patient suffered chemical injuries after receiving the wrong cream due to misreading of a prescription.

India lacks comprehensive national data on prescription-related harm, but documented cases include patients suffering severe reactions after taking incorrectly dispensed drugs. Pharmacists such as Chilukuri Paramathama in Telangana have long campaigned against illegible prescriptions, citing instances that resulted in fatalities. In 2016, the Medical Council of India recommended that all doctors prescribe drugs with generic names, legibly, and preferably in capital letters, says the BBC.

Despite these guidelines, pharmacists say poorly written prescriptions remain common in smaller towns and rural areas. Ravindra Khandelwal, CEO of a Kolkata pharmacy chain serving more than 4,000 customers daily, said staff often must call doctors to clarify instructions, even as urban centers increasingly adopt digital prescriptions.

With India's population exceeding 1.4 billion and millions relying on handwritten prescriptions in rural regions, courts and health authorities say improving legibility is critical to patient safety.