Believe it or not, annually over 5000 patients admitted in US hospitals die due to “non-medical reasons” and the figure could be higher in India.Commissioner and Secretary Health and Family Welfare, DP Wahlang brought the audience at the 17th Scientific Conference of the Meghalaya Medical Service Association to a rapt attention today after he read out the disturbing figure from a US health care report.
Wahlang said the cause of non-medical deaths occurred because nurses were unable to correctly decipher the doctors’ prescription owing to “bad handwriting” and wrong drugs were administered. This led the audience to burst into laughter.
“This is a serious issue,” he insisted, adding, “doctors everywhere have bad handwriting and it’s a fervent request that this should be corrected,” he told the gathering of physicians and medical experts.
He said there hasn’t been much study on the cause of annual non-medical deaths in India and expressed fear that the figure could be higher than that of the US.
“In the US they sought to find a solution to this problem and they found one. The easiest way being doctors are asked these days to prescribe drugs by writing in capital letters,” he added.
Wahlang brought up an issue that has been debated for years whether doctors should take more responsibility to write more legibly while prescribing medicines.
In Florida US there has been a legislation passed for legible prescriptions while demand for computer printed prescription is growing all over the world.
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