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I have been on these forums for a pretty long time so some of you know my situation with my husband and his pain meds. All things aside, last month the pharmacy we have been going to for 6 years filled my husband's pain meds incorrectly... he has two scripts, one for breakthrough pain that will last 2-4 hours and the other pill is the one that lasts 12 hours controlled release. Got it so far A "fill in" pharmacist filled both his Rx's. The 12 hour one did not get filled properly, it was for the breakthrough pills. I have these in a locked box so I can control his meds. For a whole month I thought my husband was just wanting more pills but I didn't give them to him. Longer story short. This last month we both went through pure hell....almost to the point of separation because I couldn't take how he was acting. I guess he was in semi-withdrawal for a whole month. No, I didn't call the pain clinic because they wouldn't have believed whatever I said. No, I didn't check for the "CR" release on the bottle. I trusted the pharmacist. WRONG......the regular pharmacist that filled his script for this month told me it was the wrong med. I know some of you will say it is my fault for not checking the meds but we have been doing this for 6 years no problem. Morale, check, check, check the pain meds or any meds you get from the pharmacy. I'm pretty sure I could sue and get some money for his future meds but I don't have the money to even sue the b-----ds......Thanks for being here for me.
I doubt you'll be able to sue. If you do find that you'd like to take this situation before a lawyer, it will unlikely go beyond that:
He may have suffered from more pain b/c of the wrong medication being given to him, but there was no true, life-threatening adverse outcome.
Additionally, both you and your husband have been doing this for years. It's not like you were given a bottle labeled with a foreign medication name/dosage for the first time. You both had access to the bottles. You could/should have read the label. You yourself said this.
Pharmacy errors are more common than we are lead to believe. There really isn't anything to sue for since it would require (1) the pharmacy admitting under oath that they made a mistake, and (2) there was some kind of "measurable" harm. Most of these people just get away with it.
However, there is something you can do. Your state has some kind of regulatory agency for pharmacies. Find out who that is and report the SPECIFIC Pharmacist involved. It will cause that person to be investigated and, hopefully, give them a "wake up" call about checking medications thoroughly before releasing them to patients. If you need help with this, please DM me your zip code or the name of your city and state and I will research this for you.
I'm sorry this happened to you and your husband. I am living in severe pain every day and truly understand how the quality of life is greatly diminished when one doesn't feel well 24/7.
A lawsuit won't help you but you can file a complaint against the pharmacist who made the error to the state board of pharmacy. It will be on the pharmacist's licensure record then. If he or she has several such errors, some kind of action will probably be taken.
But you're right: the moral of the story is for everyone to always, always, always check your medications before you leave the pharmacy. Or as soon as you receive them, if you do mail order. Pharmacists make mistakes. It's happened to me, but fortunately I caught the error before I took the wrong meds. When I took them back to the pharmacy, the pharmacist apologized and gave me the correct medication for free.
And one time when my brother was a little boy, he was given an antibiotic prescription on which the label said "Take one teaspoonful every hour for the first three days." Should have been "the first three DOSES." We wondered why we ran out of the medication so fast.
I had a kinda opposite thing happen. My cardiologist gave me a script for back pain, supposed to be Hydroco...whatever. Took the script to Wal-Mart and the pharma said, "this med doesn't come in this dosage."
Wal-Mart caught it. I don't know what the script was incorrectly written for. They called my doctor and got it straightened out.
Glad it got resolved without any permanent harm...other than your mental anquish the last month. My husband takes several heart meds. and each bottle comes with a description decal right on it ("this medication appears as a small round white pill with 234 stamped on one edge"). We have called the pharmacy a couple times because his meds matched the descriptive label but were different that what he had normally been getting (a change in the look of the generic version).
Thank you for the important reminder for everyone to double check. Pharmacists are human and do make mistakes.
Pharmacists catch a lot of doctors mistakes. They also make mistakes of their own since they are only human too. They also know that their mistakes can have serious consequences and I have never met a one who took that responsibility lightly. They do their best, often under a great deal of stress, but as a patient you still have some responsibilities. There is a reason they ask if you have any questions about your meds, every single time you pick them up.
If you have only encountered one mistake in six years I'd say that's a pretty good track record, I wonder how many people could say that about their own jobs?
Here's another tip: always count the pills in the bottle, especially pain meds.
The pills have a high "street value" and aside from pharmacists, others who work in pharmacies are low paid. Addiction among personnel, including pharmacists, is not unknown, either.
along these lines I used to do business with a pharmacy which didn't always have enough pills but charged me the full amount and wrote on the package "I owe you 7 pills" this would steam me up. I insisted they charge me only for what they gave me and keep a record of how many more pills i can get for that script. later found out they had addict on staff and almost ever pain med rx was short.
I have had two pharmacies that gave me the wrong meds. They were for someone else with my last name. I got home both times and discovered it. Should that be reported to someone? It was no doubt not the actual pharmacist that did the mix up--probably a technician.
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