To be a bit shocked by the pharmacist's incompetence?

[Lackland]

My Dad was discharged from hospital yesterday. He is 91 and takes a lot of medication.

The hospital consultant reviewed all of his drugs and increased 2 of them. Both treat his heart.

I took his new prescription to the local pharmacy. When we got home I checked through his meds to find she had made 2 bloody big errors. One drug was for 60 tablets taking 1 twice a day. She had given 28 with 'take one a day' written on the bottle. The other error was a drug had been increased to a larger dosage from 1.25 to 2.5. She had given the smaller value.

I took them back and pointed it out to her. She apologised and corrected the mistake. But bloody hell! Two mistakes!

I shall check everything a lot more carefully in future.

that's really not good enough and I thought all scripts were double checked before being issued?

then again, my GP once prescribed a course of antibiotics at one a day for 28 days instead of 4 daily for a week, the pharmacy said "that's not right" and rang him - he had pressed the wrong key for dosage, even though this was obvious they got him to email over a correction note.

I agree with phantom scripts are checked twice for this reason. Have you complained?

good for you for checking and getting it corrected!
a misake like this shouldn't happen. if the pharmacist wasn't sure or had questions they shoud check with he prescriber.

I triple check everything after a pharmacist nearly killed me.

I am severely allergic to aspirin & all aspirin products. Pulled a muscle in my back while pregnant. Went to chemist, told him I'm allergic to aspirin and pregnant etc & was looking for the strongest painkillers I could safely take as was in shit loads of pain.

He gave me Deep Heat spray. I confirmed with him it was safe for pregnancy/allergy. He assures me its fine. I pay and just as I'm walking out I read the bottle.

Which says quite clearly, "contains aspirin"!

Pharmacists are human and there is obviously human error etc, so it is so so important to double check everything.

I hope your dad feels better

She just gave him what he usually had, didn't notice that two of the items had been adjusted.

I haven't complained, but she was clearly shocked and immediately apologised. In fact I think she seemed very upset about it. I think she has just slid up a big learning curve on her arse.

I don't think complaining would be beneficial? WWYD?

I would complain - that's shocking.

Thanks Laly, Dad is good now.

Wow that pharmacists make such schoolchild errors.

(See what I did with the non specifying gender description?)

I was given mahooosive anti biotic tablets for my the 18mo ear infection. (Obviously should be the liquid)

Took it back and it was GP fault for printing a generic adult anti biotic prescription!

I had a similar situation to phantom when the GP prescribed two different medications for DD1 that are not compatible. The pharmacist recognised the error immediately and dealt with it.

DD1 had taken both types of medication previously but obviously not at the same time and the GP thought we'd said that she'd taken them together so prescribed them to be taken together. Quite shocking really!

I switched pharmacies after I asked for Calpol for a 4-month-old baby, and they gave me the 6 year plus one. Fortunately I noticed before giving DD a dose.