The family of a five-year old boy in the Chicago area is claiming that a case of mistaken identity resulted in the boy receiving the wrong medication and suffering a near-fatal reaction with possible long-term health effects. They have filed a negligence lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking $50,000…
Confusion between two similarly-named drugs can be harmful or even fatal if the error is not detected quickly. An error could result from any number of circumstances, such as a pharmacist who misreads a doctor’s handwriting or a nurse who accidentally administers the wrong drug. The U.S. Food and Drug…
A doctor/medication safety specialist recently wrote an article about a common abbreviation that could lead to severely adverse consequences in patients. The article, which appears in the web version of the Pharmacy Times, discusses one common abbreviation for acetaminophen, APAP, which is based upon the chemical composition of the drug,…
Ontario hospitals recently released a new report detailing some 36 incidents that occurred last year where medication-related mistakes led to patients suffering severe harm or even death. Among the reported incidents, patients were harmed when given incredible overdoses of narcotic painkillers, received the incorrect drug, or were administered an additional…
A recent article in Pharmacy Practice News discussed ways in which updated labeling standards for Heparin Sodium Injection and Heparin Lock Flush Solution may not eradicate the problems associated with overdose completely. One major reason being that some of the older problematic versions of the label remain in pharmacy stocks.…
A Washington woman narrowly avoided a potentially tragic prescription error, when she picked up her usual prescription for the vitamin B12. The label on both the bag and the container even contained the correct name: Cyanocobalamin. The woman noticed that the color of the actual liquid was different, in addition…
Pharmacy and medication errors are not limited to similar looking pills getting mixed up. A recent article by a pharmacist discusses the value of having an independent verification process in place in order to prevent mix ups or misinterpretations. For example, in one case an order for the drug “eribulin”…
A Seattle woman suffering from multiple sclerosis, who also recently underwent hip surgery, went to her local pharmacy to have her prescriptions filled. When the woman went to take her pills, she noticed that something was a bit off. She knew that thecapsule was supposed to be white and green…
Several groups of doctors and health care officials are calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to modify its guidelines for opioid painkiller prescriptions. The proposed changes would include restrictions on “off-label” uses, meaning uses not explicitly approved by the FDA, and limits on the amount of time…