While you may understand why a consumer would make a mistake with prescription medications, you may have difficulty fathoming how a medical provider could do the same. It happens quite frequently, however, for a variety of reasons.
You should take time to learn more about how these mistakes occur to do your part to ensure that it doesn’t affect you.
Who makes medication errors and how?
Medication errors can happen at various stages within the supply chain before it makes it to the patient, from the prescribing to compounding to the administration ones. Errors can happen at the hands of:
- Physicians: They may not ask patients enough questions to come up with correct diagnoses and prescribe patients the wrong medication as a result.
- Pharmacists: They may formulate a compounded drug incorrectly or fill a prescription with an expired drug, the incorrect medication or the wrong dosage.
- Nurses or nursing home caregivers: They can administer the wrong drug, give a patient too little or another too much of the prescribed one, which can easily lead to serious injuries.
In all three situations, each party also must ask patients about drug allergies, other medications that they’re taking that may adversely interact with the new one, and going over contraindications involving them. If they fail to do their due diligence on this end, this may result in adverse outcomes.
Should someone’s failure along this supply chain have resulted in your adverse outcome, then you may have a reason to file a malpractice claim against them. You’ll want to learn more about what goes into building a case before taking any legal action in your matter.