What a prescription must contain in India

30 August 20267 min read

Photograph by Lucas Guimarães Bueno on Pexels

What must a doctor’s prescription contain in India?

The prescriber’s name, qualification and registration number; the clinic’s name and address; the date; the patient’s name, age and sex; the drug with strength, dose, frequency, duration and route; and a signature. Schedule H and H1 drugs additionally require the prescription to be retained and, for H1, entered in a register.

What has to be on it

There is no single prescribed format in Indian law, but the Indian Medical Council regulations, the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules and consumer case law between them settle what a prescription needs to carry. Missing elements are what turns a clinical decision into a defensible or indefensible record.

The prescriber — name, qualification and state medical council registration number. The registration number is the one most often left off and the one that matters most.
The clinic — name, address and contact number.
The date. Not optional, and not the date it was printed.
The patient — name, age and sex. Age matters because paediatric and geriatric dosing differ, and a prescription without it cannot be checked.
Each drug — name, strength, dosage form, dose, frequency, route and duration. "1-0-1 × 5 days" is a frequency and a duration; it is not a dose.
Signature, and a stamp where you use one.

Legibility is a legal point, not a joke

The MCI has directed that prescriptions be written legibly, preferably in capitals. A printed prescription settles this permanently, which is the strongest single argument for prescribing from software rather than a pad.

Generic names

Regulation 1.5 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct) Regulations requires that drugs be prescribed with generic names, legibly and preferably in capitals, and that rational prescribing be ensured. Enforcement has varied, and the National Medical Commission has revisited the wording, but the safe position is unchanged: write the generic name, and add the brand in brackets if you have a specific reason.

Schedule H, H1 and X

Schedule H — dispensed only against a prescription, which the pharmacy retains. Most antibiotics sit here.
Schedule H1 — everything in H, plus a separate register recording the prescriber, patient, drug, quantity and date, kept for three years. Covers third- and fourth-generation antibiotics, anti-TB drugs and some habit-forming medicines.The register in detail.
Schedule X — the strictest: a prescription in duplicate, a separate licence, and records kept for two years. Cannot be prescribed by teleconsultation at all.

Teleconsultation prescriptions

The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines set out a prohibited list that may never be prescribed remotely, and restrict what can be prescribed on a first consultation. A teleconsultation prescription must state that it was issued by teleconsultation.More on the rules here.

What a printed prescription should look like

Practical points that come up every time a clinic starts printing:

Print on A4. Half-sheets get lost, and pharmacies dislike them.
Put allergies in a box that cannot be missed, near the top. This is the single most useful thing on the page.
Number the drugs. Unnumbered lists get misread when a line wraps.
Show the follow-up date if there is one. "Review in 5 days" written on the prescription is booked far more often than one mentioned aloud.
Keep the footer for the registration number and the clinic's phone — not for marketing.

Clinikr prints prescriptions on your letterhead with your registration numbers, puts allergies where they cannot be missed, and freezes a prescription once signed so an amendment is a new dated document rather than a quiet edit.

Written by the team building Clinikr, clinic software for Indian practices. Corrections and disagreements to hello@clinikr.xyz.