Let me share an experience, once I was just standing there at the reception lobby, may be it was a weekday, and an old woman came inside. She has a look of worry all over her face, like a stone is placed on her heart. She was holding a cheap notebook which she submitted to the reception counter carefully like it was a delicate object. She opened it. Bengali handwriting, very neat, very careful. Dates on the left. Medicine names spelled out in shaky English letters. Little suns drawn for morning, moons for night. She had mapped out her husband’s entire medication schedule after his heart surgery. But the thing is, the medicines kept changing. One doctor added something. Another changed the dose. A third said to stop one but she couldn’t remember which. Her husband, deciding all by himself, stopped taking the pink pill prescribed by the doctors entirely. As the reason behind is after taking the pill, he feels drowsy which he doesn’t like. Now his wife, the old woman shared in a whispering voice that she did not have any clue what to do and what if something went wrong for her fault?
That question sat in the air for a moment. And I thought, this is not my fault. This is about a system that writes instructions in a language so many people cannot speak.
What Nobody Tells You About Not Understanding a Prescription
Here’s the thing about prescriptions. They’re supposed to help, but often they just stare back at you like a stranger. Tiny writing. BD, TDS, SOS may be common to see in a prescription but very few people know their full form. For some one who grew up and read Bengali or knows basic English cannot apprehend these short forms, it is nothing for them. And when a pharmacist rattles off instructions fast because there’s a queue building behind you, you nod. Of course you nod. What else can you do? You take the medicines home and then the real confusion starts. Is this the one before food or after? What does “HS” even stand for? I have met patients who took their entire week’s blood pressure pills in two days because they misread the label. I’ve met a grandfather who was giving his grandchild half the dose because he thought the child looked too small for a full tablet. These are not foolish people. These are people who were never given a proper explanation in words they could feel comfortable with.
The World Health Organization has been saying this for years — poor health literacy leads directly to mistakes and hospital visits (read more on the World Health Organization page). It is not a Howrah problem only. It’s everywhere. But in Howrah, where families are often squeezed between work, long commutes, and multiple doctors, the cracks are wider. And patients fall through them quietly.
So We Changed How We Talk to People at MCKV Health & Medicare
I remember a discussion we had internally, nothing formal, just a few of us sitting after a long day. Someone said, “What if we just stop assuming people understand? What if we start from zero every time?” That shift in thinking was small on paper but enormous in practice. From that week, we made a quiet rule for ourselves. No patient leaves with a prescription until they can explain it back to us in their own words. Not in medical terms. Not in English necessarily. In whatever language they think and dream in.
Being a Trusted healthcare in Howrah — and I mean truly trusted, not just claiming it on a banner — means you have to sit down, even when you’re tired, even when there’s a line, and say, “Didi, tell me what you ate for breakfast. Good. Now, let’s fit this tablet into that time. After your puffed rice, before your tea. That’s its spot.” It means watching an elderly man’s face change from anxious to relieved because for the first time the instructions actually make sense to him.
What a Normal Day Looks Like Inside Our Room
Let me just tell you about a patient we had recently. A middle-aged gentleman works at a small shop near the station. His sugar has been creeping up, blood pressure not great either. He came with a fresh prescription and that slightly lost look. The coordinator here, who has patience like one of a saint, takes the stool and sits next to him. She did not sit at her desk at this moment. She sat beside him, like you would with a family member. She took out the strip of the BP medicine. “This one, it works very gently. You take it when you first wake up, before tea. You brush, you take this, then you wait a little. Only then you have your tea. Got it?” She wrote it down on a sticky note — not in English, but in Bengali, in big clear letters. Then she did the same for his sugar tablet, explaining that it needs some food in the stomach first, otherwise he’d feel weak and sweaty. She asked him to repeat the whole plan. He got one part wrong, laughed at himself, corrected it. She didn’t rush him. And by the time he stood up, he was holding those sticky notes like they were gold. He told me later that his daughter read them too, and now she reminds him every morning. So that one conversation, that fifteen-minute patient talk, actually reached three people. That’s how trust travels, I suppose. Slowly and through families.
The Way This Spreads Through a Household
I have noticed a pattern over the years. When you take time with one person, the whole family absorbs the knowledge. A grandmother who finally gets her insulin schedule will show her grandson the glucometer and say, “Come, let’s check my sugar together, don’t be scared.” A husband who understands his wife’s thyroid pill will nudge her gently at dinner, “You haven’t taken tonight’s dose, have you?” And sometimes, families that used to keep all their tablets jumbled in a plastic container start using those weekly boxes with day and night clearly marked. It is a small change, a mundane one, but it signals something huge. The household is no longer guessing.
I remember a couple, both retired, who used to just quietly accept whatever was handed to them. After a few visits with us, they started asking questions. Real questions. “If my fever is gone, do I still need to finish the full strip?” “Why is this new tablet a different colour from last month’s?” That kind of shift — from quiet acceptance to genuine curiosity — is when I know the work is actually working.
A Few Things I’d Tell a Friend Over Tea
I never like giving advice that feels like a list. But over time, I’ve collected a few small habits that seem to help. If you’re sitting in a doctor’s chamber and the handwriting is hard to read, it’s okay to say, “Sir, I can’t read this, can you please tell me?” Most doctors will actually respect that. At the pharmacy, ask them to write the purpose on the strip — in Bengali, in Hindi, whatever you prefer. “For BP.” “For gas.” “For pain.” Simple words. Keep a single notebook for all health matters. Not mixed with grocery lists, not torn out randomly. One book. And when you put your weekly pills into those day-night boxes, have someone else in the room look over them. Four eyes catch what two miss. Oh, and please, for heaven’s sake, don’t take someone else’s medicine just because their symptoms sound like yours. I have seen small mistakes turn into big emergencies that way, and it’s heartbreaking because it was so avoidable.
Why This Feels More Urgent Now in Howrah
Howrah has changed. More clinics, more specialists, more tests. It’s good in many ways. But it also means patients are collecting prescriptions like trading cards. I see so many people now who take five, six, seven different tablets a day. And with each new addition, the potential for confusion grows. It’s not their fault. It’s just a lot to keep track of. That’s why being called a Trusted healthcare in Howrah has to mean more than a neat waiting room and a shiny sign. This means when you enter the clinic with a handful of prescriptions and worries in mind, someone will be there to support you to ease with all the worries compassionately and in the language you are comfortable with. Someone will make sure you leave feeling lighter, not heavier.
At MCKV Health & Medicare, we decided a long time back that this is non-negotiable. We cannot control everything in a patient’s life. But we can control those fifteen minutes when they sit across from us. We can make sure those minutes are full of clarity and not rushed mumbling. And when I see a patient walk out, holding a medicine strip with a handwritten note stuck to it, and they turn back to give a little nod or a smile, I know we did right by them. It’s not fancy work. It’s just honest, stubborn, human work. But it builds something lasting — a kind of trust that doesn’t break when the next health crisis comes, because the patient knows there is a place where they will be heard and understood. And slowly, across families and neighbourhoods, that feeling spreads. One prescription at a time.
