Recently, a state appellate court issued a written opinion in a personal injury case brought by the parents of an 18-year-old man who died of an illegal drug overdose while at the defendant’s residence. The case presents interesting issues that may arise in Maryland personal injury cases in that it…
While the exact number of Maryland pharmacy errors is disputed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration offers a conservative estimate of approximately 7,000 deaths per year due to medication errors. Due to lenient reporting requirements in the pharmacy industry and the industry’s interest in keeping errors out of the mainstream…
The chances are that anyone who has dropped off a prescription or refill request to a retail pharmacy has had to wait a considerable amount of time for the pharmacist to fill the prescription. First, the patient must wait in line to drop off the prescription. Then, the pharmacist often…
Prescription errors can have devastating consequences for people of any age. The wrong dosage or medication can have long-lasting consequences and, in some cases, can be fatal. A recent article shows how children may be at greater risk for prescription errors in some circumstances. Since some medication is produced at…
When a pharmacist incorrectly fills a patient’s prescription, the problem created is two-fold. First, the patient often ends up taking medication that was not prescribed to them. Of course, depending on the type of medication involved, this can cause serious side effects. In some cases, the damage caused by taking…
Medical errors, including Maryland pharmacy errors, are commonly believed to be one of the leading causes of death in the United States. However, the actual number of pharmacy errors is up for debate because, as is the case in Maryland, most states do not require pharmacists to report the vast…
Most Maryland pharmacy errors occur when an overworked pharmacist receives a correct prescription from a physician and makes an error in filling the prescription. Commonly, these errors include filling the wrong dose of the correct medication, providing the patient with the wrong administration instructions, or filling the prescription with the…
Earlier this month, a man in a New Zealand hospital died due to opioid toxicity after he was administered what turned out to be a fatal dose of fentanyl. According to a local news report covering the story, the error was a result of system-wide failures across the spectrum of…
When most people think of picking up a prescription, a retail pharmacy comes to mind. However, each year, a significant portion of the overall prescriptions filled are filled by hospital pharmacies. While there are many similarities between hospital pharmacies and their retail counterparts, there are also major differences that can…
By some estimates, medical errors are among the top three causes of death in the United States. While the classification of a medical error is broad, including surgical errors and medical malpractice, the classification also includes pharmacy errors. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of pharmacy errors each year, and…