Prescription Error Lawyer in Covington and Cincinnati

What is a Pharmacy Error?

Pharmacists have a critical job in patient care and recovery. Prescription medications can relieve symptoms and cure diseases when properly administered, but any misstep can lead to permanent injury and even wrongful death. According to the National Library of Medicine, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people every year, making it one of the most common medical errors. What’s more, between 7,000 and 9,000 Americans die every year from medication errors. 

A medication or prescription drug error is a preventable mistake that can lead to irreversible patient harm. This includes anytime a medication is prescribed, dispensed, administered, or ordered incorrectly. The error can be the fault of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, or even anesthesiologists who make negligent anesthesia mistakes.  

How Do Medication Errors Happen?

At the end of the day, medical professionals are human beings who can make mistakes. However, because of the importance of their position, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and any professional healthcare worker must undergo extensive training and be extremely diligent in everything they do. There is a certain standard of care that must be met by these professionals, as things like medication errors result from any breach of duty of care.

More specifically, medication errors can result from misdiagnoses, poor charting, and poor communication. Distractions and even bad handwriting can also play a part in medication errors. Sometimes, physicians or nurses read the chart wrong, and pharmacists can make critical errors in filling the prescriptions they receive. Medication error-related injuries can also be a result of failure to check the background of a patient; overdoses and drug interactions can occur when patient history is not checked.  

Wrong Prescription

We’ve all seen a doctor write an illegible prescription and think “how in the world will the pharmacist know what it says?” Doctors often use a type of shorthand that trained pharmacists can read. This shorthand includes a lot of abbreviations that look similar. For example, QD means ‘once daily,’ but QID means four times a day. A simple mistake could mean that a patient receives four times the amount of the prescribed drug, which could easily result in an overdose. Oral prescriptions can also result in a similar-sounding drug being administered instead. 

Patient History

Knowing the patient’s medical history is an important part of patient care. If a healthcare professional fails to check patient history, they could prescribe a known allergen. A drug that has an interaction with current medicine could also be mistakenly prescribed.    

Patient Education Failure

Pharmacists and medical professionals have a duty to warn you about the risky side effects that medication could cause. Pharmacists also have a duty to tell you how the medication is administered, when to take it, and any drug interactions it may have. If a doctor or pharmacist failed to inform you of these risks, you may have a valid medical malpractice lawsuit on your hands.

Distractions

There are more than 6,000 prescription medications out there, and there are many more over-the-counter medications available in America. Medications can come in pill, liquid, or powder form and a variety of dosages. Healthcare professionals can be distracted by any aspect of their busy job. 75% of medication errors are caused by distractions. Distractions can lead to physicians mistaking certain drug names or writing the incorrect medication, the wrong dosage strength, or the wrong frequency.