Pharmacy mistakes

[chris parker]

I have had this happen to me twice with the same pharmacist in 3 days, At a well known High Street Chemist's chain. The fist time out of date drugs were dispensed, the second the adult dose was dispensed for my son who was 7 months old at the time. Had we given him the drug he would have overdosed. My wife spotted the errors and luckily neither drug was adminisered. We telephoned our GP in both cases and he gave us another script to be taken to another chemist. He advised us to retain the wrongly dispensed drugs and contact The Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

 

 

They sent a chap from London to collect the drugs and take statements from us. They kindly wrote to us some time later to advise us that the pharmacist concerned had recieved further training and a system was introduced at the company to have all drugs checked and countersigned at the time of dispensing.

 

Please report this, it could be me at the counter next.

[Rockling]

Report him, he's not supplying what your father is on .... what is he on? Scary stuff with terrible potential!

[MickJ]

Thanks to all that replied with suggestions.

 

A report of the incidents has been made to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the local Primary Care Trust.

 

A word with the surgery Practice Manager opened my eyes to the amount of complaints they had recieved of a similar type. Also the fact that they were generally dissatisfied with the way the company ran this Chemists practice and their reliance on Locums to staff the dispensing side.

 

Will post any results in case others find themselves in the same position.

[nursejudy]

Well done Mick...

[Little Tinca]

One of the painkillers that I take is called Tramodol a strongish opioid type analgesic. The amount I have to take in combination with other analgesic's is very high. The effects numbing. I collected my script as normal and the chemist said that there was a brand change (probably cheaper). They were in a white chemist type box and marked up as 100mg SR. No probs thought I and went on to take them as normal. Two days later I felt quite unwell and had some difficulty breathing, staying alert and not going to sleep. Well to cut a long story short the chemist had given me 200mg tablets in a box marked 100mg. Potentially quite a dangerous dosage.

I phoned the surgery and apparently there was a hell of a to-do in the chemist's shop (which is attached to the same building). The chemist who dispensed them on that day was a locum. Within half an hour the usual pharmacist came knocking at my front door to inspect the drugs I had been given, writing down what I had to say, and replacing the script with a new one. On leaving he went out the door almost backward and on bended knees. Overall and luckily no harm done but now I double check everything. I think my GP has taken it further as it would appear that mistakes at that shop were starting to become far to frequent.

I did think that pharmacies had to have a double checking system. Don't know wether that is true though.

[Vagabond]

MickJ - you have done the right thing.

 

I noticed another poster referred to "out of sell-by date drugs"

 

Most tablets come in a flat foil strip with the expiry date stamped on it.

 

There is a potential problem here, which can arise in the following way -

 

Some companies market their drugs in strips of 30, others in strips of 28.

 

It is unreasonable to expect GPs to remember which is which when prescribing a month's supply of more than one sort of tablet.

 

If the GP gets the number "wrong" the pharmacist cuts up the strips with scissors (wonderful use of a professional man's time) to provide the exact number prescribed.

 

Thus he accumulates undated snippets, which may run out of date (and possibly become less potent) and these snippets will get dispensed to some unlucky recipient.

 

I get over that by always specifying HOW MANY tablets (ie the exact pack size for that particular tablet) I need when requesting repeat prescriptions from my GP. I would refuse to accept snippets.

 

I suggest y'all do the same.

[peterpikefisher]

A only safe answer.