Drugs mislabelling - who can I talk to?

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Dad has had a change of dosage in his medication, but drugs have been coming through from pharmacy with the old dosage on the label on the box. Seems to be a computer error at the pharmacy end, rather than error at GP or nursing home. Does anyone have any idea who I can take this up with? Dad sorted now, and no ill effects, but I'm thinking if it can happen with him, it can happen with someone else, and if it's a systemic error, rather than one-off human error, it needs sorting. Difficult for me to talk to pharmacy, they don't know me from Adam, is there some overriding body, the equivalent of PALS, that I could talk to?

[Soontobe60]

Who changed his dosage, who was responsible for informing the pharmacy and what was the timescale for this? And who noticed the different dosage?

[SunnySomer]

I’ve had similar happen to me (but it was me myself) and I raised it with the pharmacist in charge. They took it extremely seriously.

[MereDintofPandiculation]

It's difficult for me to raise with the pharmacist as i am not the patient, and it is the nursing home that order the repeat prescriptions, not me. That's why I was hoping someone knew of an over-arching body I could raise it with.

I'm not so worried about Dad - it's all sorted now. But what if it was a drug where taking too much had an immediate bad effect? Or one where dosage had been changed because of side effects? It needs to be sorted so it doesn't happen to someone else.

[SunnySomer]

Hello - took me a long time to respond but have you been in touch with these people? www.pharmacyregulation.org/raising-concerns
When I got the wrong stuff I was the same - not concerned for me, as I spotted the problem - but the medication I take can make you seriously ill if you have the wrong dose, so it was more for someone who might have visual impairment, or, I don’t know, maybe learning difficulties or whatever.

[CaptainCallisto]

It may well be a labelling error at the pharmacy, but if your dad has his medications delivered (weekly or monthly) from a 28 day prescription it may be that the pharmacy don't actually know about the change. I spent ten years working in pharmacy and I can't count the number of times we got a monthly prescription from the GP, made up the weekly blister packs or labelled and bagged boxes ready to go, only for the dose or medication to be changed a week later. That's no issue if someone tells the pharmacy - they can make the appropriate changes, but if nobody tells you you just carry on delivering based on the original 28 day prescription. It might be worth calling the pharmacy or popping in, explaining that you're the daughter of Mr X, and just checking whether they have the amended dose on the prescription (or if they did at the time the medication came out to him).

If it's a dispensing error they have procedures to follow and it will absolutely be acted upon, but if it's like 99% of these 'errors' that I came across it needs flagging with the care home or GP that the pharmacy need to be informed of any changes independently. Hope that all makes sense!

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Thanks, Sunny, Callisto.