In the name of Horace and Jupiter

 

Prescriptions are an integral part of every doctor’s practice. What one writes in the prescription determines whether he/she will be worshipped as a savior by the patients or will be laughed at by pharmacists for writing grossly incorrect doses of drugs.

The word “drugs” is first introduced to us when we hear about some dark alley beside school where some precocious kids assemble to taste this forbidden pleasure of “doing drugs.” While for them it is “forbidden pleasure” for most of us its just “forbidden”. We are made to do long projects about the ill effects of “drugs” on body, mind, and society.

It is when we step into the first pharmacology class of second year of MBBS that we find out that drug is something that is “used or intended to be used” for the “benefit of the recipient”, that too it is administered in the names Horace and Jupiter who are Gods of health and well-being. That’s when we start mugging up the long definition of drugs, with special emphasis on “benefit of the recipient”, which is the polar opposite of what we learn during our teenage years. If a student cannot answer anything else in the viva, the definition of drugs is the deal breaker which makes her pass or fail.

A huge part of our second-year coursework consists of mastering the art of writing prescriptions. We are made to write hundreds of long and short prescriptions each with its different sets of drugs and doses. The prescriptions are supposed to be written in a specific format; a format which varies from teacher to teacher, book to book and semester to semester. One can never be sure about the format, even on the exam day. One must memorize hundreds of drugs, their doses, diseases for which they are used, and sometimes an entire set of drug regimes for a single disease (like malaria or leprosy). Prescriptions can drive you crazy (if you were not already driven crazy by the first-year subject that is)!

Another painful part of this subject is to remember the side effects of the different drugs. While the ones with eidetic memory go on to write long lists of side effects during exams, for most of us, the list of side effects ends at “nausea and vomiting” every time, so technically it can’t even be called a list! Some great people even write nausea and vomiting to be the side effect of ondansetron, which is a drug used against nausea and vomiting in the first place!

I remember a fun incident which happened during our pharmacology viva where we were faced by an external examiner who was obsessed with etiquettes and was scolding every student who dared to wear an apron which was not ironed properly. Now, he was a soft-spoken man too, and when he asked one of my batchmates, why she didn’t iron her apron, she misheard him and presumed that he was asking a question about the different iron supplements. She went on to tell him a long and detailed list of oral and intravenous iron preparations only to find out later that he was just talking about ironing clothes!

This subject of drugs may seem boring for some and scoring for some others. But one must remember to take it seriously because this is the subject which teaches us that, when the pain of MBBS grows unbearable, all you need is 650mg of paracetamol to obtain relief.😉😉