Given out of date penicillin by pharmacy for my toddler?

[MyMabel]

DD has been poorly since Sunday and after 2 hospital trips we finally got diagnosed with bacterial tonsillitis and conjunctivitis so sent home with a prescription for antibiotics. Went to the pharmacy on Wednesday morning to get the prescription, been giving it to her since then. I’ve just noticed as I’m doing her next dose that the expiry is 07/2021 - it’s only just out, but surely they shouldn’t have given them to me out of date?

Will it effect DD? Should I take them back? Carry on giving them to her? I’m not really sure where to go from here

No they shouldn't have given it to you, it's unlikely to do any harm but I would bring it back and they should issue a new bottle

Yes take it back! They can reissue some in date medication. It shouldn’t have been given out.

I’ve had the hospital pharmacy give me 3 months worth of medication and two months worth would have been out of date by the time I came to take it. It shouldn’t happen but it’s human error. I’m sure they will be mortified. You can report dispensing errors if you feel it warrants an official complaint.
I hope DD feels better soon.

Human error, just get them to change it.

It will be fine as it's barely passed its date, but yes go back and they will issue the rest of the course again

This is really poor form on the pharmacy's part. Absolutely take it back. Id also complain, not because you want to get anyone in trouble but because it'll make them check their protocols and potentially make them more robust to stop it happening in the future. Im a nurse - it'd be classed as a drug error if any nursing staff did this.

They definitely should not have dispensed it when it was out of date. It shouldn’t do any harm as the dates are usually very conservative but it might not be as effective. However, I don’t think I would give her any more doses if I was in your position. Take it back to the pharmacy first thing in the morning and they should give you a replacement and a BIG apology. They should also log it as a dispensing incident and if they are one of the bigger chains you will probably get a letter from head office with an apology as well.

Just check it’s an expiry date and not a manufacturing date. On some packaging it’s not very clear (I nearly made the same mistake once which is why I am asking).

Please take it back, this shouldn't happen because the dispenser and the pharmacist should be checking the medicine is in date before it even reaches the patient. This is why a dispenser does the first checks and the pharmacist the second check.

They will take it seriously and they do have to log it, then they can learn from it and have a more rigorous date checking process in place.

As a PP said, I'd want to be reasonably certain it is an expiry date rather than a manufacturing date.

Take it back, although it'll be fine, will still have done the job and won't have harmed your daughter. The pharmacy need to be aware that there's been a mistake so they can try and prevent it from happening again.

It’s definitely the expiry.

It’s got bn(batch no) and exp(expiry)

I’ll pop in tomorrow morning to get a new bottle. Don’t want to get anyone into trouble but it did give me a bit of a ‘argh’ moment as it’s for my 20month old you’d think they’d be so careful!

Oh yes that’s very clearly an expiry. Don’t worry about anyone getting into trouble. The pharmacist will want to know about the mistake so they can learn from it. It’s not about pointing the figure or blame.