Prescription drugs can be dangerous. Indeed, that is exactly why the government does not allow for them to be purchased over-the-counter and requires that a patient be prescribed the medication by a physician and then must pick up the medication at a pharmacy. The intent of creating a system like…
Earlier last month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a “black box” warning for a birth control medication, Essure. According to one local news source reporting on the newly released warnings, there have been over 5,000 women who have reported negative side effects while using Essure. These side effects include…
Ideally, pharmacists would always provide their patients with the correct medication and dosing instructions. However, that is not the reality we live in. It seems as though each week several new reports of prescription errors arise, some with serious or fatal consequences. While the duty to prevent these errors lies…
A pharmacist’s mistake in providing the wrong medication to a patient is always a serious concern, but never is it more serious than when the patient is a child. Children are much more susceptible to suffering serious or fatal side effects when given medication that was not prescribed to them.…
Chances are most people have heard of or read about someone being provided the wrong prescription or the wrong dose of a medication when they go to pick up their prescription from a retail pharmacy. In fact, these errors are quite common, with some estimates of the number of errors…
Mistakes happen. Despite the best efforts of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, sometimes an error will occur, and a patient will be provided with the wrong medication, or provided with the right medication but with inaccurate instructions on how to take it. In these cases, patients will almost always first reach…
When most people think of a pharmacy error, they think of a retail pharmacist providing the wrong drug to a patient who then takes it up to the register, checks out, and goes home to take the medication in their own home. However, this only accounts for a portion of…
When a patient goes to the doctor and is given a prescription, one of the first things the patient is likely to ask is “what are the potential side effects?” Indeed, most pharmaceutical drugs have side effects of some kind, ranging from the mild to the more severe. In some…
The use of prescription opioid painkillers has soared over the past few years. In fact, according to one recent news article, the number of prescriptions for opioid painkillers has increased more than 300 percent over the past 15 years. While the medication may be helpful to those suffering from severe pain, this…
Pharmacists across the United States fill hundreds of thousands of prescriptions each day and, since they are human and prone to making mistakes, there are estimated to be hundreds of errors per day in pharmacies across the country. Some of these errors are minor or will be caught before the patient…