Pharmacy Dispensed Wrong Item

pre-reg

Come on people...relax a little....chill out..

This is what i hate about this culture...obviously a counter assistant made a mistake.

The other way to look at at is this...we all make mistakes right...and the person collecting the bag can he read english? If so he would have seen the name was wrong and the mistake would not have happened.

So why not blame the person picking up the bag?

Look forward to your answer...i just think that we complain too easily...we need to chill out a bit like us australians..

Thanks

mum2one

Anetares wrote: »

Well, I said bordering on, implication being not having a diagnosis, I know plenty of older people, friends of my older relatives, who have to do their own pills for the week, fill those weekly boxes themselves. There is inconsistency between brand name and generic label drugs dispensed, so its easy for them to get confused.

And as for my own situation, its not unlike receiving 4-5 hourly IM injections of morphine in hospital, the nurse gives you a bundle of other pills and you just take them... through trust. It's the same for a lot of other people, even if you don't automatically recognise the carton something is dispensed in, you tend to think you should take it anyway because you're not a healthcare professional, so you trust that you should take what you're given because you're lead to believe it is in your own best interests.

I always read the patient information leaflets and look things up online, but few people do. Ok, that isn't 100% responsible of them, but the dispensers and prescribers also have a duty of care to the patient, the same as any organisation providing a service.

Mistakes like this persons need to be called to account because of that one time in a million when it may affect someones health. There isn't such a thing as being too cautious when health and lives are involved.

There's also another factor involved though, over the Christmas period, if somebody gave your medications out to another person a few days before Christmas, it could leave you without some very necessary things, for instance if the person was diabetic or asthmatic... that in itself can cause problems.

And I forgot to add, so *edit*... In this case though, I don't think it's entirely fair to go the PCT route if it was a mistake of the shop.. the shop should be the ones held to account if they're the ones who made the mistake of handing out the wrong persons medication. Exactly what are the rules governing a pharmacy concession?

Its not the 1st time its happened to use from that shop, the 1st time we didnt think anything of it, as we'd got home and about 10 mins later someone from the pharmacy came round and said there was an error with the medicaition and swopped it.

Once is fair enough but twice, how many other people has it happened to, In my case was luckly checked the bottle as I wasexpecting ear drops and got given wrong medication, but how many people actually look at the item, properly rather than just a glance. By the time I realised it was 11pm at ngt, the chemist itself had they realised the error had enough time to sort the error out.

mum2one

krisskross wrote: »

Oh dear now that really is a dreadful mistake to make. I was under the impression that prescription only medication which diazepam certainly is could not be given to the patient unless the pharmacist was present.

In theory yes, but some people have home delievery, so there is a wayof getting round it,ie the pharmasist despenses it to a driver.

hollydays

This thread is an eye opener.

mum2one

pre-reg wrote: »

Come on people...relax a little....chill out..

This is what i hate about this culture...obviously a counter assistant made a mistake.

The other way to look at at is this...we all make mistakes right...and the person collecting the bag can he read english? If so he would have seen the name was wrong and the mistake would not have happened.

So why not blame the person picking up the bag?

Look forward to your answer...i just think that we complain too easily...we need to chill out a bit like us australians..

Thanks

Yes my dad can read English- small error there was no name on the bag, and he confirmed the address with the member of staff who then let him go his merry way.

My point to it is had I of not looked at the label then as it was pencillian I would of ended up in hospital pretty poorly as Im allergic to pencillian, so yes in my eyes pretty major error!

pre-reg

mum2one wrote: »

Yes my dad can read English- small error there was no name on the bag, and he confirmed the address with the member of staff who then let him go his merry way.

My point to it is had I of not looked at the label then as it was pencillian I would of ended up in hospital pretty poorly as Im allergic to pencillian, so yes in my eyes pretty major error!

Fair point if there was no address label.

Thank god you looked at the label on the medicine bottle...what kind of world would we live in if people didnt even look at what tablets they were swallowing...

Next they will be having breakfast with eyes shut.... sorry dont mean to go on and on, but still dont see where the big fuss is coming from.

Agreed the person at the counter made a mistake by giving your dad the wrong bag - but mistakes happens. Its not like they deliberately tried to poison you!

Thanks

pre-reg

its like saying i was walking down the street...if i hadnt looked at the road i would have got run over...

I know what lets complain to the DVLA...

jhxmt

To be fair to the original poster, there IS a duty of care involved when you are dispensing medication to people.

Everybody saying "you should check the bottle" - yes, you should check the bottle. You should also read all the small print on every credit agreement you sign up to. You should also open up a new computer to check that it's got all the correct hardware installed.

You should do all these things, but how many people have (a) the time to check every detail of other people's work and (b) the technical knowhow to actually make sense of it? Do you honestly think that a typical elderly 74 year old woman is going to notice a difference on the label of her medication? And what if it's new medication that she's only recently been prescribed, so she has no prior experience of what the pills look like, etc?

Yes, people should check things. This in no way means that the people dispensing the medicine, writing the credit agreements or building your computers should not be held accountable if they provide you with the wrong item.

pre-reg

i didnt mean that there is not a duty of care...all i meant is that we are too quick to moan..

Reading to see if your name is on a bottle of medicine is completely different to opening up a pc i would argue.

Like i say if we didnt look before crossing the road and something happened would we blame the DVLA?

Similaraly the counter girl made a simple mistake that we can all make - there is no need to complain to PCT and ASDA and get £25 vouchers!!

Becles

krisskross wrote: »

I find it totally amazing that anyone would consider taking any drug that they were unfamiliar with without carefully checking the actual drug, the dosage and any other instructions.

It happens.

I'm seriously allergic to penicillin. I was very poorly one weekend so my husband took me to the out of hours GP service. I explicitly told them of my allergy and it was written in big letters on my notes.

I was diagnosed as having a water infection and given antibiotics which my husband collected from a nearby pharmacy where we're not known.

I forget the name of the antibiotic that was given, but the name didn't give any clues that it contained penicillin. It just came in the brown pharmacists bottle with the name label stuck on and there were no notes. I had an incredibly high temperature and was too poorly to go and look it up on the internet to make sure it didn't have penicillin in. I just put my trust in the medical people I had seen.

I took one and lay down on the sofa and that's the last I can remember! Hubby said I went into anaphylactic shock, so he phoned 999 for an ambulance. Once they saw the bottle of pills, the paramedics knew straight away it was penicillin and took me to A&E. I was given a load of anti-histamines and thankfully no serious harm was done.

I complained about that, and the PCT investigation discovered that the nurse practitioner that did the diagnosis didn't know the antibiotic contained penicillin, and the GP just did the prescription without reading my notes. The PCT said more training would be given and procedures would be changed to make sure it didn't happen again.