If a prescription is written manually, what must it include?

For a manually written prescription, it is essential that it includes a handwritten signature of the prescribing doctor. This signature serves as the prescriber's formal authorization of the medication prescribed to the patient. It indicates that the prescriber has evaluated the patient and has made a clinical decision regarding the treatment, thereby ensuring that the prescription is legitimate and legally binding.

The other options, while they may be relevant in other contexts or formats of prescriptions, are not universally required on a handwritten prescription. For example, the prescriber's medical license number can be important for verification but is not mandatory on every handwritten prescription. Likewise, a barcode for scanning is typical in electronic prescriptions but not applicable to manually written ones. Lastly, including the patient's next appointment date is not standard practice and does not relate directly to the medication prescribed.