Medication Errors occur regularly in Florida. If you received the wrong medication in error from a doctors office, pharmacy, nursing home or hospital, it is important to call Palm Beach County’s Leading Injury Attorney David Shiner to discuss your rights as a patient.
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When Patients Fall Victim to Prescription Drug Mistakes, Shiner Law Group Presses for Improved Safety Measures
For the umpteenth time, Eugene Wright told anyone who would listen he was not the psychiatric patient of the same name who allegedly had threatened to harm himself and others during a doctor’s visit that morning.
The two police officers who were standing guard over Wright in examination room No. 5 at Meadville Medical Center in western Pennsylvania weren’t convinced. As Wright continued to plead that he had been at work the entire day and the officers were making a terrible mistake, a nurse entered the room and injected him with a powerful antipsychotic medication that sent the 63-year-old into a drug-induced blackout that lasted more than a day.
Only after the damage had been done did the police officers and medical staff acknowledge that the wrong man had been arrested and drugged. Now, in a federal lawsuit, Wright alleges that police and health workers failed to take basic steps to verify his identity during his arrest and hospitalization.
That’s pretty scary. But, perhaps, more alarming, is that you can relate to the unfortunate mistake. No one should have to endure the consequences of a medication error, but far too many patients do.
What about your medication errors claims?
If a mistake was made prescribing, dispensing or administering your medications, our injury firm is determined to hold the parties in error responsible for any damages.
Anyone Can Fall Victim To A Medication Error
The Food and Drug Administration estimates that 1.3 million people are injured by medication errors each year and, many more mistakes go unreported.
Doctor’s offices, hospitals, pharmacies, and senior living facilities have all been guilty of medication errors, especially when their healthcare providers are pressured to contend with diverse conditions and multiple patients at once.
The good news is that medication errors can be prevented and most healthcare providers including doctors and pharmacists continue to step up their efforts to improve patient safety.
However, for every improvement, there is another potential risk from the time a clinician prescribes a medication to when a patient actually receives the drug.
Shiner Law Group warns that medication error claims typically result during any one of these steps:
- Ordering Medication: A healthcare provider selects an inappropriate medication, or drug’s dose, frequency, and duration;
- Transcribing Medication: Medical or pharmacy staff misinterpret a prescription;
- Dispensing Medication: A pharmacist releases the wrong quantity of the medication in an incorrect form;
- Administering Medication: A wrong medication is delivered; a wrong patient receives medication, or the medication is administered at the wrong time.
Medication errors are just wrong. The trouble is anyone including doctors, nurses, medical staff, pharmacists and drug manufacturers are prone to medical errors and can be held liable. Consider when:
- Doctors prescribe wrong medications or dosage, inadequately take into account a patient’s medical history or fail to warn about side effects;
- Nurses administer mistaken medications, improperly inject a drug, or administer the wrong dosage;
- Pharmacists misinterpret a doctor’s prescription and relay the wrong medication to a patient, or print incorrect information on a prescription label;
- Drug manufacturers wrongly tag medications or fail to provide warnings labels.
Any of these missteps could be grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit
While the circumstances surrounding your medication error dispute may be unique and the harm you experienced certainly serious, an experienced personal injury attorney will be required to prove that a healthcare practitioner – doctor, nurse, pharmacist or manufacturer – failed to provide a reasonable standard of care.
When negligence is, in fact, determined in your care, an attorney will be required to show that your damages are a direct result of the medication error.
You want to trust your doctor. You want to feel secure when your nurse injects a medication into your arm. You want to feel comfortable that the medicine your pharmacist has given you is what you are required to take. You want to believe that you were not subject to medication errors, but your adverse reaction to treatment, worsening condition, and, now, permanent injuries tell you otherwise.
When healthcare providers depart from standard procedures for dispensing medication and then disregard transparency by failing to report errors, you can depend on the top-rated injury attorneys to review your claims and chart a strategy that is unique to your circumstances. You owe it to yourself and to others who may have been left in the dark about medication errors.
Shiner Law Group has a long history of litigating disputes over medication error claims in Florida’s. Put the onus on the skilled attorneys to sort out the facts of your case and recoup compensation that you deserve.
If you, someone you know, or a loved one has been injured it is important to call Florida’s injury attorney, David Shiner to discuss your rights and legal options. Shiner Law Group offers a FREE No Obligation Consultation by calling (561) 777-7700.
