Doctors, pharmacists and prescriptions - Bad handwriting can kill

While more experienced pharmacists seem to have no problem reading doctors, prescriptions, new pharmacists often struggle to read the names of medications.

Mohammed Ali holds a handwritten prescription, which looks more like a scrawl, and goes from one pharmacy to another on Doctors Street in Erbil, looking for one that has the drugs he needs. He reads English, but he can't read what the prescription says. He was unable to find the drugs he needed and is convinced the pharmacists couldn't read the prescription.




Ali is worried because he couldn't get the drugs his doctor prescribed. He wonders if the pharmacists, unable to read what his doctor had written, simply avoided admitting they couldn't read the name of the medication and simply say, "we don't have that drug."

Pharmacist Aso Loqman has been in his profession for years, and read the prescription easily. He said new pharmacists have a harder time reading doctors, writing.

Dr. Ari Salahaddin, a chest surgery specialist, said according to a poll conducted 10 years ago in the U.S., doctors, handwriting is hard to read. "Physicians should not scribble and write carelessly. Sometimes they [physicians] write just a letter "A" and no one knows what the letter means. But there are some standard medical abbreviations and experienced pharmacists know them," said Salahaddin.




A pharmacist at Lanwe pharmacy, Salar Fatah, said doctors should not write the prescriptions so carelessly. "The names of the medicines have to be written fully and carefully," said Fatah. He thinks few physicians have good handwriting. "It has become a puzzle why physician, handwriting is so hard to be read," he said.

Dentist Mustafa Rassul believes there is a reason behind doctors, poor handwriting: "Medical students cannot write all their notes in full during classes, so they have to rely on writing short notes." He said prescriptions in Europe are typed so patients and pharmacists can read what is written.

Naz Abdulqadir, a pharmacist, is new to the profession. She says when she has difficulty reading a prescription, she consults her colleagues. If she is alone and can't understand the items on the prescription, she sends the patient back to the physician to ask him to write the prescription more legibly. She suggests physicians type their prescriptions so patients can be certain about what they are given.




Salahaddin believes pharmacists and physicians understand each other. He says physicians do not have much time to spend writing prescriptions and instead prefer to spend more time asking patients questions.

Dr. Ashna Hatam, another physician, says there have been times when she has had difficulty understanding the prescriptions, as she hasn't been able to read the handwriting. She says physicians should write the chemical names of the drugs rather than the brand names. That way, she says, there will be fewer mistakes.