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Family Health Talk: Wrong Prescription Dosage

Medicines are supposed to treat, cure, and manage the symptoms of whatever ailment or health condition you may currently have. They are prescribed by doctors and health professionals to help in promoting better health.

However, sometimes patients are given the wrong dosage or wrong prescription. The inherent fallibility of humankind still rings true even in the modern times.

Because medicines sometimes have very similar-looking or similar-sounding names, wrong drug dispensing due to human error can never be avoided completely.

2,588 cases of pharmacy malpractice complaints were filed against pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in the United States alone in the years 1990 to 2003. This is according to the 2003 Annual Report of the National Practitioner Data Bank.

Associate professor of pharmacology Gerald Gianutsos of the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy says that one of the most common drug dispensing errors in the field of pharmacy is incorrectly written directions on prescription labels.

Patients given the wrong prescription medicine or wrong dosage are two of the less common but graver drug dispensing errors. As a matter of fact, according to a recent study sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration, 30% of drug dispensing errors involve wrong dosages.

The instances when pharmacy workers give out wrong dosages can be caused by improper medicine storage, overworked staff, improperly trained or unqualified pharmacy personnel, or pure negligence.

These wrong dosages may be in the form of ill-advised dosage instructions on how many times you should take the medicine or in the form of a negligent miscommunication on during what time of the day you should take it.

Also, this may also be caused by confusion on the interpretation of the metrics used in the medicine itself or by a pharmacy technician’s careless switching of one patient’s prescription to that of another.

The adverse effects of wrong pharmacy dosage ranges from mild to dire. This negligence can lead to mild consequences like nausea and skin rashes, and to graver ones like permanent brain damage, over-dosage or even death.

So what can you do if you or any of your family members are victims of a wrong prescription dosage?

The answer is to exercise your right to health and avail yourself of the services of a legal counsel.

You and your family can get just compensation from negligent pharmacies if ever this unfortunate event happens to you because the law covers these incidents. The law protects its citizens from these medical malpractices.

You have to keep in mind that the lawyer you choose can either make or break the case. So, you must choose a reliable law firm or lawyer with corresponding experience and background in handling cases like this, such as the law office of Scudder Seguin.

Moreover, in choosing an attorney to represent you and defend your case in court, you can ask your friends and relatives for recommendations. By doing so, you will have the advantage of having access to honest reviews or opinions about your prospective lawyer.

Remember that you and your family’s health should always be top priority. Where you have the right and you are in the right, there is nothing wrong about defending your rightful claim to compensation.