Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyer Blog

Hospital Pharmacies Require Experienced Hospital Pharmacists

December 29, 2008 | Vadim A. Mzhen

The Federal District Court in Northern Ohio recently decided an employment law case that highlights the potential for frequent hospital pharmacy errors committed by inexperienced hospital pharmacists. In Colvin v. Veterans Administration Medical Center, the Federal District Court decided that a hospital properly dismissed an inexperienced hospital pharmacist for his repeated errors while dispensing medication to hospital patients.

In a lawsuit against Ohio’s Veterans Administration Medical Center (“VAMC”), Deon Colvin (“Colvin”) claimed that the hospital breached the parties’ contract when it fired Colvin in May, 2003. Colvin began working at the VAMC in June 2002, and after a seven week orientation period, began working in the hospital pharmacy on the midnight shift, where Colvin was the only pharmacist on duty.

In his complaint, Colvin stated that he was “ill prepared to work the night shift by himself because he had little experience working in a hospital environment where many of the practices, procedures and medicines were different from that which he was used to dispensing at a pharmacy in a retail environment.” During his first few weeks on the midnight shift, Colvin made three signification errors: first, he dispensed ten boxes of syringes of injectable morphine, where the physician’s order called for only ten syringes; second, he dispensed an insulin prescription without including important special instructions; and third, Colvin failed to find and correct a doctor’s error in an order for the blood-thinner, heparin

The Veterans Administration Hospital fired Colvin as a result of these medication errors, and Colvin subsequently filed suit in federal court. The Federal Court agreed with VAMC that Colvin’s errors constituted serious mistakes that justified his termination. The Court granted summary judgment in favor of VAMC, and it threw out Colvin’s lawsuit against the hospital.

While it is clear that the hospital needed to protect its patients by firing the negligent pharmacist, the Maryland medication error attorneys believe that the Veterans Administration Hospital was also negligent in hiring and placing an inexperienced hospital pharmacist alone in the pharmacy without the support and supervision of more senior pharmacists.

Maryland Hospital Pharmacy or Local Drugstore Errors: The Case to Be Made

December 26, 2008 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Yesterday, a potential client called me concerning injuries that she sustained when a pharmacist employed by a Baltimore hospital had made a pharmacy error which resulted in her being given the wrong medication for an extended period of time. This middle aged woman explained that she received the wrong antibiotic which failed to control her infection. She explained that she was stuck in the hospital for many extra days as a result of the pharmacy error, and that she was unable to be with her family on Thanksgiving.

Before telling me the facts of this case, this potential client asked me a very appropriate question: “What do I need to show in order to win my case?”

Pharmacy misfill cases are tort cases, or cases brought pursuant to the negligence laws of the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia. There are four basic elements to every successful negligence case:

Duty: Hospital or drugstore pharmacists are professionals who must fill prescriptions in a reasonably competent manner. The pharmacist must fulfill his or her duties carefully, and with a close attention to detail.

Breach of Duty: A pharmacist’s failure to fill a prescription accurately (or provide competent advice). Carelessness, distractions or allowing a pharmacy technician to perform the activities properly reserved for the pharmacist are common causes for a breach of duty.

Causation: As a result of the carelessness of the pharmacist, the wrong medicine is given, and the customer or patient sustains injuries, harms, losses or damages.

Damage: Injuries, harms and losses, including a prolonged recovery from surgery, illness or sickness, death, disability and impairments that can be temporary or permanent, lost wages and additional medical bills, are all common forms of damages

Nationwide, Medication Errors Put Millions in Danger

December 22, 2008 | Jack D. Lebowitz

According to the National Coordinating Counsel for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP), medication errors kill more Americans annually, than work place accidents. Maryland lawyers who pursue prescription error cases recognize the financial and human impact that errantly filled prescriptions have on the citizens of this state. Pharmacy negligence is one of the most pressing health concerns across the nation due to the sheer number of people affected by errantly filled prescriptions.

Some common types of medication errors include:

• Incomplete patient information (i.e. not knowing about patient’s allergies, other medicines they are taking, previous diagnoses, and lab results);

Maryland Patients Face Dangers Caused by Prescription Abbreviations

December 18, 2008 | Vadim A. Mzhen

It is clear that patients are put in danger by simple things such as penmanship and the use of inconsistent abbreviations. This must change. Maryland pharmacy negligence attorneys work with clients to hold negligent pharmacist responsible for the injuries that they cause across the state.

Your doctor hands you a prescription that you quickly take to your local pharmacy to fill. You look down at the unintelligible handwriting and find that it looks like a foreign language full of jumbled, incomprehensible abbreviations. Doctors, physician’s assistants, and other medical professionals often use abbreviations on prescriptions in order to save time. Too often, unfortunately, pharmacists misinterpret abbreviations used on prescriptions and, as a result, Maryland patients are put at risk of injury or death caused by improperly filled prescriptions. From January 2000 to August 2004, 498 health care facilities reported 19,000 medication errors caused by a pharmacist’s misinterpretation of another doctor’s short hand.

A pharmacist in Virginia misread a doctor’s abbreviation and dispensed two times the proper amount of heparin to a patient. As a result, the victim suffered a massive hemorrhage. The pharmacy ultimately settled the plaintiff’s case for $200,000.

Maryland Pharmacists Warn of Anticoagulation Medication Errors

December 16, 2008 | Jack D. Lebowitz

The Maryland Pharmacists Association Newsletter for November, 2008 reported that in the last seven years, in hospitals alone, anticoagulation medication errors occurred in 70,000 instances. In twenty-six of those instances, the patient died. The report goes on to state that “[h]eparin and warfarin are consistently ranked among the 10 most frequently reported drugs involved in errors.” (Warfarin is the generic name for the better known brand name drug, Coumadin.)

When I read this article, I was surprised and concerned that such a potent drug – a blood thinner – given in too high a dose can cause a deadly hemorrhage, and that given in too low a dose might fail to prevent the formations of blood clots that the drug is designed to prevent, is so regularly dispensed by hospitals improperly.

I am interested to learn the names of the other medications that are most commonly misfilled by hospital pharmacies. Are they pain medications, like oxycodone or morphine, insulin injectables that can provide treatment in a rapid onset or an intermediate duration, or antibiotics that combat specific infections?

A doctor in Baltimore once told me: “Hospitals are dangerous places.” Add hospital pharmacy errors to the list of dangers.