Mangaluru: The long-held belief that doctors write illegibly only while prescribing medicines — and normally otherwise — may not be entirely accurate, according to a study conducted in Mangaluru.The research, carried out by Saritha D’Souza, HoD of the postgraduate department of criminology and forensic sciences, along with her student Nashwa Iqbal, examined whether doctors alter their handwriting style while writing prescriptions compared to their regular handwriting.Saritha told TOI that despite the common perception about unreadable prescriptions, the differences between prescription writing and normal handwriting were minimal, with similarities outweighing variations in most cases.“Forensic science uses handwriting analysis to identify individuals based on class and individual characteristics,” Saritha said. “Class characteristics include general features such as size, shape and style of writing, while individual characteristics help determine whether a person has attempted to disguise handwriting from its natural style.”The study sought to examine whether doctors could still be identified through their handwriting despite the tendency to scribble prescriptions that are often difficult to read.“Even while writing prescriptions, doctors leave behind certain individual characteristics. We wanted to find out whether those features could help identify the writer,” she said.According to forensic science principles, experts can still determine whether altered or disguised handwriting belongs to the same individual.The study, conducted last year, was initially presented by Nashwa as her dissertation. After six months of further research and refinement, it was published in a peer-reviewed journal. The overall research took more than a year.The researchers studied 50 male and female doctors from Mangaluru, collecting three prescription samples and three exemplar handwriting samples from each.The class characteristics analysed included size, spacing, slant, speed, skill, line quality, alignment and pen pressure. Individual characteristics studied included initial and terminal strokes, number of loops and the crossbar formation of the letter ‘t’.The findings showed that 100% of doctors displayed similar spacing between letters, while 90% showed similar pen pressure in both prescription and exemplar writings. At the same time, 50% showed variations in slant and 46% in alignment.The researchers concluded that significant similarities existed in both class and individual characteristics between doctors’ prescription writings and their regular handwriting, indicating that they generally retain consistent handwriting traits in both forms of writing.
