Top Lawyers for Medication Errors

Prescription errors can occur at almost every point in the health care chain. It could happen when the pharmacies or pharmacists filling a prescription give patients the wrong medication. It could happen when a doctor writes a prescription drug and forgets that the patient has an allergy or is taking a medication that reacts badly with other medicines. It could happen when a nurse dispenses the incorrect dosage of medication. 

All of these prescription errors have potentially devastating results and can lead to an injury. For example, your loved one can suffer from severe side effects as a result of a drug prescription error, can experience negative drug interactions, or can be given an inappropriate medication. Like all medical negligence cases, whether meningitis misdiagnosis or radiology malpractice, those involving misfiled prescriptions and other prescription errors are generally complex in nature and replete with opportunities for negligent parties to avoid taking responsibility.

MORE ABOUT MEDICATION ERRORS AND MISFILLED PRESCRIPTIONS

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported, “Some studies indicate that about 3 percent of the prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies have potentially harmful errors. The patient may be given the wrong drug, the wrong dosage, or the wrong directions. The pressure on retail pharmacists to crank out prescriptions can be intense, with some overseeing hundreds of prescriptions a day.”

The report also noted that most pharmacists are overworked and that they delegate prescription filling tasks to technicians without proper supervision. In addition to fatigue among pharmacists, other preventable errors occur all too frequently because systems for safely prescribing and ordering medication are not appropriately used. For example, a widely recognized cause of the error is illegible handwritten prescriptions. 

Also, errors may result from insufficient or missing information about co-prescribed medications, past dose-response relationships, laboratory values, and allergic sensitivities. Prescription errors can also occur when a regimen is too complex or when prescriptions are transmitted orally. 

A prescription error lawyer has to determine how a doctor or a pharmacist made a mistake while prescribing the drug and how prescription drugs led to a personal injury. This type of case can be difficult to prove, so you need to hire an experienced attorney. If you, your child, or a loved one have suffered a personal injury from a complication caused by a prescription misfile or other medication error, the prescription error lawyers at Davis Adams can help. They can obtain the necessary medical records and have an expert physician review the file free of charge to determine whether a doctor or other healthcare provider was negligent. 

MEDICATION ERRORS IN NURSING

Drug errors are amongst the most common health-endangering errors that affect client treatment. Such mistakes are an issue in the US as well as internationally, and they have been shown to increase death and injury rates, the amount of time patients spend in the hospital, and care expenses. 

In one recent study, the most common types of documented errors were incorrect dosage and also infusion rate. Two typical causes were making use of abbreviations rather than full names of drugs as well as similar names of drugs. This lack of pharmacological expertise in nursing is disturbing. Years of experience of the nurse was not a statistically significant factor in the study. However, medication or prescription errors for orally-administered medicines were found to be related dramatically with the number of patients a nurse cared for.

With today’s busy and crowded hospitals, it is no wonder that we see so many cases of emergency room malpractice and nursing malpractice. If you have concerns about your care, or you have suffered an injury, don’t hesitate to speak up. A prescription error attorney can help you gather all evidence you’ll need to prove a doctor, pharmacist, or another health care professional made a mistake prescribing a drug.

MEDICATION ERRORS IN HOSPITALS

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists has a set of guidelines aimed at reducing medication and prescription errors in hospitals. Of course, no system is perfect and a medication error can still occur despite the guidelines. And some medications tend to have more issues, for example, we see a fair amount of Coumadin lawsuits at Davis Adams.

Many of the guidelines focus on interaction with the patient since this is a key place where human error can come into the equation. The areas of patient interaction where a medication error can occur include patient intake, medicine administration, patient monitoring, and discharge from the hospital. 

At each of these points, healthcare professionals should be communicating with the patient, asking about allergies and other medications they’re taking, and monitoring the patient’s vital signs. Failure to do so may result in an injury or serious consequences to the patient.