Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals make mistakes every day. Although we expect each to provide us with the medication we need to keep us healthy, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes medication errors happen that can change your life or even become fatal. Here are 7 of the most common medication errors.
Improper Dosing
In order for medication to work properly, it’s important that patients take the amounts they need according to what their bodies need. If you or given too much or not enough, you could end up sicker than you started. Improper dosing can happen when medicine is prescribed as well as when patients are hospitalized.
Prescription Errors
Mistakes with your prescription can happen if the doctor prescribes the wrong medicine or a medical professional administers a medicine without considering your allergies or interactions with other medications. Other errors include prescribing the wrong dose, quantity, or concentration as well.
Wrong Drug
Believe it or not, patients are often prescribed or given the wrong drug altogether. As you might guess, this can be a fatal mistake that happens across every person in the medical profession from doctors to pharmacists.
Incorrect Route of Administration
This error simply means the medication is taken in the wrong way. The route of administration is the path in which the drug is supposed to enter your body. Whether the medication must be inhaled or administered intravenously, it must be taken correctly or the results can lead to extreme illness or even death.
Wrong Dose Times
Another common mistake that is made with medication is taking it at the wrong time or too many times. This mistake can be one that is made by the doctor or pharmacist, but it can also be the patient’s fault. Taking medication at the wrong times is common with elderly people who often forget that they have taken their meds or forget to take them at all.
Not Following Directions or Wrong Directions
It is possible that medication can be prescribed with incorrect directions, but patients also fail to follow the directions as well. It’s important that medication is not only prescribed with the proper instructions, but that patients also follow the directions as they should.
Patient Mix Ups
Sometimes, errors involve giving patients someone else’s medicine or getting the patients confused. This means that people end up taking medication intended for someone else’s illness or injury, which can have dire consequences. Although medical professionals must have contact with many people every day, it’s important that each is treated as an individual without the risk of being prescribed someone else’s medicine.
Experienced Attorneys Can Help with Medication Errors
Because of human nature, medication errors can be made in a number of ways. However, many times they are completely preventable and occur because people aren’t paying attention or aren’t following proper procedures for prescribing medicine.
When this happens, those medical professionals can be considered negligent and held accountable for their errors. If you or someone you love has experienced a medication error, contact the attorneys at E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy. To request a free and confidential consultation call us at (518) 380-2597 or fill out our online contact form today.