Wrong Prescriptions More Common Than Most Realize

Prescribing medication is something that all doctors (and some other medical professionals) do each and every day, and more often than not, prescribed medicine is a great help to the patient’s recovery and well-being. However, sometimes the wrong medication is prescribed due to a wrong diagnosis made by the doctor. Other times, the prescription may simply be written incorrectly, and a wrong number indicating dosage or number of pills dispensed can be written.

Medication errors encompass all mistakes involving prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, herbal supplements, vitamins, and minerals. When physicians and other health care professionals make mistakes involving medication and a patient is harmed in any way, medical malpractice may have taken place.

Medication errors are among the most common medical errors made in the United States each year, harming at least 1.5 million people each year. The extra costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring in hospitals alone amounts to over $3 billion annually. This estimate does not even take into account lost wages and productivity or additional health care costs. Research shows that there are approximately 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries each year in our nation’s hospitals, 800,000 in long-term care facilities, and approximately 530,000 medication errors among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics.

Can I Protect Myself From Medication Errors?

There are precautions that consumers can take to ensure they do not become one of the medication error statistics listed above:

· Know what kinds of medication errors occur. The FDA has found that the most common types of errors involve administering the improper dose, giving the wrong drug, and using the wrong route of administration. Older people are at a greater risk for errors because they often take multiple medications. Children are also vulnerable because a lot of medications prescribed for them are based on their weight and miscalculations often occur.

· Find out what the name of the drug is and what it is prescribed for. There is an astonishing number of people who cannot even name the drugs they take and have no idea what they were prescribed for. Knowing what you’re taking and why can help reduce your chances of getting and/or taking the wrong medication.

· Find out how to take the drug and make sure you understand all the directions. For instance, if you’re told to take a drug three times a day, is that every eight hours or with meals? Sometimes these differences matter greatly.

· Keep a running list of all medications (even OTC and herbs) that you take and make your physician and pharmacist aware of this list. There are certain drugs that are absolutely not supposed to be prescribed with other drugs. Drug interactions can often be fatal.

· Ask questions. It’s your body and your life at stake. If you do not understand something, ask your doctor for explanation/clarification immediately.

New computerized systems for prescribing drugs show promise for reducing the number of drug-related mistakes each year as studies have shown that paper-based prescribing produces the highest error rates. Electronic prescribing is safer because it eliminates the problems associated with reading a doctor’s handwriting, and technology can alert physicians to drug allergies, adverse interactions with other drugs, and other potential problems.