Pharmacist Error!!!

[Bina]

Laura, thanks for the informative post. I do keep a card in my purse with my meds and dosing on it.
I am very "anal".....okay maybe a bit OCD, and I check everything two or three times.
I have never been on regular meds before and now I take only Metoprolol and Coumadin.
The pharmacist seems to have problems when clients have different doses of the same med on file.
A previous pharmacist gave me the wrong dose of Metoprolol

 

[Bina]

I am looking at my asthma inhalor, Flovent. The directions for the last 2 months said,

"Squirt twice in each nostrils twice daily".

What if it was new meds and I did not know how to use an inhalor? It would be fun to try to squirt this in my nostrils. Do a lot of good too, you think??
The new prescription for this month has the correct directions.
They are just in too much of a hurry!!!!

Praline, you are exactly right: They are in too much of a hurry and meds should be double checked by an pharmacy assistant.

 

[Jkm7]

Several of my doctors, specialists as well as PC, are part of the same network and they are all going into computerized records. When I visit one, they can call up the records of my visits with the other. All Rx's are now Faxed directly from their computer to my pharmacy if they are ordered as the result of a phone conversation with one of my doctors and me. If I am present in the office, they give me the choice of computer printed Rx for me to bring to pharmacy or direct Fax sent.

At first, I was uncomfortable about the privacy issues but when I see how efficiently this seems to be working among this particular network and my acceptance there really is no privacy left in the world as we know it now, I have begun to think the positives are bigger and better than the negatives.

My pharmacy seems to handle things more efficiently as well especially when I need refillls. They Fax my doctors for the Rx and the new script is sent far faster than it used to be.

Laura.... Thank you for your excellent post. Patients do have to bear some responsibility for their own care. We have to do everything we can to reduce avoidable errors.....such as bring updated medication lists with us to doctor appointments.

 

[Philip B]

Pharmacist Error!

Pharmacist Error!

Yeah, those pharmacist errors can be a real pain...I showed up at Walmart to pickup a 5 mg perscription of Coumadin a couple of weeks ago only to be to be told I couldn't have the pills because it wasn't time yet.

I was enroute to Arizona and was almost out of the 5 mg pills that I take daily among with a 2.5 mg to make my 7.5 mg daily dose. Needless to say, I felt irritated. When I began to intensely question the pharmacist about her denial, it became very clear that a mistake had been made. My lovely wife had called in the perscription and managed to get confused about whether I needed 2.5 mg pills or 5 mg pills. I quickly realized that there was little point in focusing a bunch of energy in negative dialogue with the pharmacist or my wife, I simply asked the pharmacist for the correct perscription and moved on. All in all, the issue was easily fixed.

The point here is that when many of us are relying on coumadin or other meds to keep us from running into problems, we need to use the good sense God gave us to make sure we're getting the right meds (you made a good catch). People like our pharmacists and spouses may make mistakes on occasion. The great majority of the time these mistakes are totally unintentional (I say the great majority of the time because at some point, my wife may begin to think my life insurance looks pretty good). In my recent situation, my wife realized that she had made a mistake and felt badly about it. She didn't need me to vent my frustration to make her feel worse.

-Philip

 

[Guest]

I am a pharmacist who has made the same mistake. What I always encouraged people to do was to open the bottle and make sure that what they wanted is actually in the bottle. Pharmacists make mistakes, people ordering prescriptions make mistakes, docotrs call in refills for a strength other than what the person wants. I've had people who speak no English open the bottle and shake their head "No" when what they wanted was not in the bottle.

Rather than placing blame or not taking responsibility it is a whole lot easier to get to what makes everyone happy before they leave the store.