Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyer Blog

As Maryland Pharmacy Misfill Attorneys, we have been following the recent verdict in which $2.5 million in damages were awarded to a Montgomery, Alabama woman and her husband, who claimed to be victims of a Rite Aid Pharmacy prescription misfill.

According to the lawsuit filed in 2008, Reva Tosh received a prescription for a pain medication on November 11, 2006. When Tosh dropped off the prescription to the Rite Aid pharmacy two days later, the pharmacist misfilled the order with the steroid dexamethasone—a steroid with severe side effects often prescribed during cancer treatments.

Rite Aid Pharmacy allegedly gave Tosh more than seven times the regular dosage of the steroids for a period of 28 days, and she claimed to have developed a disorder of the adrenal glands called Cushing’s Syndrome, that caused her to suffer physical ailments, personal injury, and mental disorders, that confined her to a wheelchair.

During the trial, the the central issue was whether Tosh’s injuries were caused by the pharmacy misfill, or due to her preexisting illness of rheumatoid arthritis.

Reva Tosh was awarded $2 million in damages by the jury, and her husband Gerald Tosh received $500,000 for the his loss of her companionship.

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In a recent lawsuit that our Maryland Pharmacy Mistake Lawyers have been following, a hospital is being sued for dispensing an overdose of pain medicine to a 68-year old woman, which allegedly led to her wrongful death.

Mable Mosley was taken to the Brandon Regional Hospital last year complaining of neck and shoulder pain. She checked into the hospital on a Saturday, and within a few days stopped breathing. Mosley was put on life support, and died days later.

Mosley’s husband is suing the hospital, the hospital owners, and seven individual pharmacists in the case, claming medication negligence and wrongful death—that his wife was given enough pain medicine to end her life.

The drug in question that Mosley received is called Duragesic, a patch containing large concentrations of opioid fentanyl, a potent narcotic approved in 1990 by the FDA for use in patients that have become opioid-tolerant from using another strong narcotic pain medication for a week or longer.

Opioids are chemicals that are commonly prescribed because of their pain relieving properties. Opioids work by attaching to opioid receptors, or proteins, found in the brain, spinal cord and gastrointestinal tract. When the drugs attach to the opioid receptors, they can block out the body’s perception of pain.

Continue reading " Lawsuit Accuses Hospital of Medication Mistake and Wrongful Death " »

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has recently recalled certain lots of Tylenol, Rolaids, Benadryl and Motrin, after consulting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the J&J subsidiary that sells the drugs, is voluntarily recalling the lots of the Over-The-Counter (OTC) products, in an effort to maintain the health and safety of the consumer and to prevent OTC medication errors.

The company has recalled these drugs based on consumer complaints of an unusual, moldy, musty smell that reportedly caused nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and gastrointestinal pain. The smell was found to be caused by trace amounts of the chemical 2, 4, 6-tribromoanisole (TBA)—a chemical often applied to wood pallets that are used in the transportation and storage of the materials used for product packaging.

The FDA has criticized J&J for not reacting quickly enough to customer complaints, and for failing to fix the problem, a problem that has been familiar to J&J. Customers have reportedly been complaining since 2008 about their pills having a mildew-like odor. In December of 2009, Tylenol Arthritis Pain medication was also recalled related this same issue.

According to the FDA, J&J and McNeil did not conduct a quick and comprehensive investigation into the problem, and failed to provide high quality products to consumers—responsibly protecting them from personal injury or illness. Many consumer complaints were received as early as 2008 and 2009, and the test results indicating TBA contamination were not shared with the FDA until after an inspection.

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As Maryland Pharmacy Error Attorneys, we have been following a recent report by The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) about the danger of error-prone abbreviations and when it comes to writing a prescription—the fact that some shortcuts don’t save time, and can result in pharmacy error or injury.

According to the ISMP Error Alert article, nearly everyone in the healthcare industry uses shortcuts, like abbreviations and symbols, in an effort to save time when handwriting specifics for the prescription—including phrases, units of measure and words. Some shortcuts can in the end can be very time consuming, as they need to be checked and verified for accuracy on the receiving end. These verifications could also reportedly cause a greater chance for medication error than if the prescription was written out without abbreviations or symbols. The article claims that it is important to prevent future misunderstandings now, instead of waiting until medical abbreviations, dose designations or symbols lead to a patient injury.

The article lists a few common error-prone abbreviations, symbols and dosage misunderstandings that take more time for the pharmacist to check, and could cause medication mistakes:

• Some abbreviations that indicate the frequency of when to take the drug, can be difficult to understand, and can lead to error. In one prescription for “Penicillin VK 500 mg Q1D X 7D,” the physician accidentally typed “Q1D” (once a day) instead of “QID” (four times a day). The pharmacist realized the mistake, and that the patient was supposed to be taking the penicillin four times a day for seven days (7D). Another example of frequent error comes in the abbreviation for “D” (days), where it can also be mistaken for “doses.”

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