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The National Medical Commission (NMC) has recently issued a directive to all medical institutions across India, mandating the creation of specialized monitoring bodies to oversee prescriptions of doctors. As per the directive, every medical institution must establish a dedicated sub-committee under their existing Drugs and Therapeutics Committee. Of course, the Commission has taken a good decision as illegible prescription writing by doctors has been a major issue of crores of patients and lakhs of pharmacist have been facing for a long time now. The gravity of the issue can be gauged from an expert’s comment who aptly said that most doctors' handwriting does not look much different from an ECG tracing. The situation is worse in the case of some specialist doctors who write only the first one or two letters and the last two letters with a long line in the between. The NMC’s new directive highlights a persistent challenge in Indian healthcare sector where previous efforts by the now-defunct Medical Council of India have failed to yield results. The MCI had previously issued guidelines urging medical practitioners to use capital letters and legible scripts, these instructions were conveniently ignored by the doctors. With the NMC now serving as the apex regulatory body in place of MCI, this new circular represents a more aggressive, structured approach to enforcing compliance where earlier advisories fell short. That the Commission is seized of the issue is clear from the fact that to address the root cause of the issue, it has ordered that the importance of clear handwriting be officially integrated into the medical curriculum. All medical students will now be taught the necessity of legible documentation as a core part of their professional training. This educational shift aims to prevent the long-standing tradition of illegible scrawls from being passed down to the next generation of healthcare providers, ensuring they understand the legal and safety implications of their writing.
The NMC’s latest move comes as a direct response to a ruling by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in the case of Yogesh v/s State of Haryana. On August 27, 2025, the court declared that a legible medical prescription is an essential component of the Right to Health under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Earlier, the Orissa High Court had observed that the zigzag style of writing by doctors cannot be read by the judicial officers to reach a conclusion for evidence. Same is the case with the pharmacists at the medical shops who face difficulties in reading some of the names of the medicines written by the doctors. In our country doctors are well aware that most of the patients do not understand much about medicines prescribed to them. Most of the patients would present their doctor's prescription to the chemists and quietly walk home with the drugs dispensed by the pharmacists. It is well known that the chemist's shop is usually managed by a matriculate boy who fills in for the mandatory pharmacist. As if the general chaos at the chemist's counters was not enough, pharmaceutical companies have added fuel to the fire with confusing brand names. Obviously, as the judiciary emphasized, patients have a fundamental right to understand their diagnosis and treatment, which is often hindered by the systemic issue of unreadable handwriting. No doubt, it is a preventable medical error. The National Medical Commission should ensure that every patient in India receives clear, understandable, and safe medical instructions.
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