Doctors in state-run hospitals to write dosages in prescriptions in Bengali

Kolkata: In state-run health care establishments, doctors will now write dosages in prescriptions in Bengali, thanks to an initiative by state government that makes life easy for numerous patients. This apart, e-prescription has been recently introduced in the Bidhannagar Sub Divisional hospital.

As dosages are being written in Bengali, the patients or their relatives do not have to ask the pharmacists to clarify them. It may mentioned that many doctors practicing privately are already writing dosages in Bengali.

The doctors at Bidhannagar Sub Divisional Hospital said for the convenient of the pharmacists the generic names of the medicines have been written in English while the dosage are written in Bengali.

The doctors said many patients, even those who are educated, fail to understand prescriptions and call up doctors and medicine shops to know details about the dosages.

Citing examples, they said OD is one time a day while BD is twice daily. Similarly, TDC is thrice daily. AC means before meal and PC means after meal and HS is before bed time.

Whenever the doctors of the state-run hospitals will write the dosage as OD or BD, it will be automatically translated into Bengali in case of e-prescriptions.

Along with the Bidhannagar Sub divisional hospital, e-prescriptions will be shortly introduced in Calcutta Medical College, Burdwan Medical College, Bankura Samelani Medical College and R Amhed Dental College. Slowly it will be introduced in all the state-run health care establishments in the state.

The doctors felt it would be excellent to write the entire e-prescription in Bengal but this would be not easy as the Bengali spellings of many diseases written on the left of the prescriptions will be difficult.

It may be mentioned that it was very difficult for both patients and pharmacists to follow the handwriting of Dr BC Roy. For the convenience of the patients, Dey's Medical had engaged a person who used to read Dr Roy's prescriptions and to provide the dosage to the patients.