What has to be printed on a prescription pad in India?

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What does the law require on it, and what did the printer add?

One line is required and most of the rest is convention. Regulation 1.4.1 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 — the code in force, published on nmc.org.in — says every physician shall display the registration number accorded by the State Medical Council or Medical Council of India in his clinic and in all his prescriptions, certificates, money receipts given to his patients. Regulation 7.3 lists failing to display it among acts of professional misconduct. Consultation timings, a phone number, a decorative border, a Rx in a box: your press put those on the pad because pads look like that. No clause of the 2002 Regulations names them.

Why do I have to reprint the whole box when my address changes?

Because a pad is a print run, and a print run has a minimum. PrintStop lists doctor letterheads in A4 with a minimum order quantity of 50 pieces at Rs 609, and presses on IndiaMART quote per pad, in 50- and 100-leaf pads (checked 11 August 2026). So the address is fixed on the day the box is printed, and the day you move, add a qualification, or your council number changes, every leaf still in the box is wrong. A letterhead you type is a different object. It is re-rendered on each print, from the fields as they stand that morning.

Where do I set my letterhead up?

Account menu, then Edit profile & settings. Eight of the fields there are your letterhead: your name, medical registration number, clinic name, qualification, clinic address, clinic phone, specializations and clinic motto. Six of them print. Name, registration number and clinic name are required — leave one blank and the error appears under the field, not after you have handed a patient the page. The registration number field carries the help line "Prints on every prescription." There is no template to choose and nothing to install: the layout is fixed, the fields are what change.

Does the preview show what will actually print?

It redraws as you type. The card at the top of Settings is headed "Prints on your prescription" and reads from the same form state as the fields under it, so a letter typed into Clinic name lands in the card on that keystroke — before you save, and before any paper is involved. Two honest details: it previews the header block, not the whole page, and the clinic motto shows in the card but prints lower down, in the signature block under your registration number.

Where does the registration number print?

Twice on the page. Once in the header line — your name and qualification, then "Reg. No:" and your number, then the clinic address, separated by dots — and once in the signature block above the tear line, under your name. A test pins that output character for character, so an edit that moved or dropped the number fails before it ships. The server is the second guard: once a registration number is set, a request that blanks it is rejected, because a page that quietly lost it would still look like a prescription.

What prints under the medicine names?

The salt. Under each brand the printed table carries the molecule in italics — Dolo 650 with Paracetamol 650mg beneath it — and the dosing column carries the 1-0-1 grid with the Hindi line under it. The brand names come from an all-India catalogue of about 2,54,000 medicines mapped to their compositions, so three letters usually finds yours; a brand it does not know is added once and remembered. Regulation 1.5 of the 2002 code, as substituted by the notification of 8 October 2016, says every physician should prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters — should, and it does not say generic only.

Does the letterhead print on the paper, or only on the screen?

On the paper. The block is the first thing on the printed page, above the patient row: clinic name, then your name and qualification, then Reg. No. and the clinic address. It prints once, at the top of the first sheet. If a long visit runs to a second sheet, the medicines table repeats its column headings there — a page of rows with no headings is a page a chemist has to guess at — but the letterhead itself does not repeat, so a two-sheet prescription carries the header on sheet one and your signature block on the last. A pre-printed pad re-heads every leaf; this does not, and that is a real difference worth knowing before you switch.

What is the dashed line at the bottom of the page?

That is the tear line, marked "tear here", and below it is what you handed over at the clinic — the table headed "Dispensed — given at the clinic today". It carries no signature and no registration number, because it is a record of what was given, not a prescription. Above the line sits what the patient buys at the chemist, the investigations you advised, and exactly one signature.

Can I put my clinic logo or my photograph on it?

No, and on the photograph the code is explicit. Regulation 6.1.2 of the 2002 Regulations says printing of self photograph, or any such material of publicity in the letter head or on sign board of the consulting room or any such clinical establishment shall be regarded as acts of self advertisement and unethical conduct on the part of the physician — while sketches, diagrams and pictures of the human system are not. UpcharHub has no image upload anywhere in it, so the letterhead is text only: clinic name, doctor, qualification, registration number, address, motto.

What does this not do?

Three things, said plainly, because you will find them out anyway. Your registration number is a free-text field — nothing checks it against any State Medical Council register, so a typo prints as a typo and stays there until you fix it. The clinic phone you type in Settings is kept on your account but does not reach the printed page; the only phone number that prints is the patient's. And the printout is an unsigned draft — it says “Not valid unless signed by the treating doctor.” above the tear line, and it becomes a prescription when you sign it, not when it leaves the printer.