Even if you did not have surgery recently, you may still find yourself on the receiving end of medical malpractice. Legal professionals like Berger & Lagnese, LLC want to spread awareness on the many forms medical malpractice may take. Learn about several common examples of pharmacy malpractice that you may experience when using medication to improve your health.
Missing Instructions
Pharmacists should double-check that they properly label medication labels with correct and current instructions. That way, you know how to take your medication, such as orally, in the ear, or nasally. Depending on your health and any other conditions you have, you may need to adjust your dosage or not take a specific medication altogether. Incorrect instructions on a label may lead to patient harm.
Wrong Drugs
Before leaving the hospital or pharmacy, double-check your medication to ensure it has your name on it. You should also check that the name of the medication matches what your doctor prescribed. Another patient may have a name similar to yours, and a pharmacist may misread your physician’s handwriting. Reasons for pharmacies dispensing the wrong medication include being distracted, confusing prescriptions, multitasking and grabbing the wrong bottle of medicine, any of which may create legal grounds for a malpractice suit.
Improper Dosage
Say that you receive proper directions for the right medication your doctor prescribed. Even then, a pharmacist may list the wrong drug dosage on the medication label. This may happen because of a packaging or mathematical slip-up. Such oversights may lead to you suffering adverse side effects if you take either too much or too little of your medication.
Failure To Warn
If your doctor gives you a prescription with known risks, she or he and your pharmacist owe you a duty of care to let you know about those dangers. If you suffer harm from medication with known risks because your pharmacist did not inform you of the hazard, you may have grounds to take legal action. That said, a difference exists between unknown and known medication dangers. If your health suffers because of a drug defect your pharmacist did not know about, she or he may not bear responsibility for the harm you suffer.
Lax Drug and Patient Review
Do you take multiple medications? If so, your doctor and pharmacist should work together to determine if you could suffer an adverse drug reaction from your prescriptions. Pharmacists should know about potential allergies and allergic reactions you may have and take appropriate measures to keep you safe.
Examples of Pharmacist Defenses Against Claims of Pharmacy Malpractice
Just as you should know examples of medical malpractice, you also deserve to know how a pharmacist may deny claims of negligence. A pharmacist may claim that even though you sustained harm from taking a prescription, she or he adhered to a pharmacist’s standard of care. She or he may claim that a pharmacist with the same level of experience would make the same mistake.
A pharmacist may also claim that while you sustained an injury, nothing she or he did contribute to that harm. For instance, say your pharmacist did not warn you of a known medication risk, but you did not take your prescription before sustaining harm. Your pharmacist may say that while she or he made a mistake, that error did not cause you harm.
While you may trust pharmacists to take care of you, they are humans who make mistakes. If you suspect you were the victim of medication malpractice, you deserve to explore your situation to protect your legal rights and receive compensation if you have a case. Work with a legal professional to learn more.
one of the things I have learned having spent time in the medical field way back when, and things have not changed, is we need to be uncharge of our health and our bodies, and not rely solely on medical personnel without checking into things we have suspicion about or questions that do not get answered. Thank you for this article.