To ask you to help me with this antibiotics prescription?

[willisurvive3under2]

I have twins. Both have a chest infection. 8 months old, exact same weight. Why the different dose? This must be a mistake, right? I've only just noticed this and now I don't know what to do. Panicking a bit as I don't want to give too much! Currently planning to use the 125 for both babies until I can speak to the GP.

Pharmacy has fucked up royally! Well spotted OP!

Once all is sorted, you must let the pharmacy know what they've done.

Hope little ones are better soon by the way.

As others have said look at the personalised sticker on the side which will tell you the dose. The dose will be in mg and that will be the same for children of the same weight. The medication is the same in each bottle but differing concentration so you'd be giving a different volume to each child.

It does seem an oversight to provide the drugs in this way as obviously it increases the risk of accidental under/over dose. Likely they don't often prescribe to twins at the same time! It's not necessarily a clinical mistake though, unless maybe of course the dose advice on the prescriptions doesn't match

Thank you. The boxes match the bottles. I was told to give both babies 5ml so it's definitely a mistake. I've done some research myself while DH sorted the babies and it's correct to give 5ml of the 125. I don't know if the GP or the pharmacist got it wrong as I wasn't given the prescription back! I will phone GP and pharmacy on 27th. As someone upthread suggested, I can give 2.5ml of the stronger bottle if I run out.

Really glad I spotted this or I could have given one of the babies far too much. I've got a lot on at the moment (don't we all), a bit annoyed but I suppose I should be grateful that someone was working Christmas Eve at 5pm to help my children.

That's a big fuck up!

3 possibilities

1. The pharmacy made a mistake.
2. One of the twins has a more severe infection (the dose can be doubled for severe infections)
3. The pharmacy ran out of one strength (Does one of the bottles have a different dose from the other?)

@sueelleker That's an interesting point you make (point 2). I wasn't told if one is more severe than the other but looking online I don't think you would give 5 ml x 3 a day of the stronger dose to an 8 month old. I will ask.

Just thought I should update the thread. I phoned the GP on the morning of 26th and they confirmed both babies should have been on the 125 dose. I phoned the pharmacy, who apologised profusely and asked me to go over to collect the correct medicine. We live rurally and I have 3 small children so I asked if I could give half a dose of the 250. After much consultation with colleagues, they said it was fine.

So all good, but still worrying that they don't have a system in place to double check this kind of thing. If I'd only had one baby, I would never have realised! A double dose of antibiotics to an 8 month old 3 times a day for 5 days can't be particularly good!

Goodness that’s a big mistake.

Well done for spotting it.

That's pretty bad tbh, if you didn't have 2 babies you possibly wouldn't have spotted the mistake. I hope the person you spoke to in the pharmacy has raised it as a concern and they investigate how it happened.

Our local pharmacies have one person to make the prescription, one to check it, and a 3rd person who checks it again and bags it.

My mum works in a pharmacy. Always always take a photo of your prescription and check your drugs against it.
While it is good practice to have a dispenser and a checker, a pharmacist can dispense and check the drugs alone, so mistakes can slip through (especially at the end of the day on Christmas eve). Humans are fallible, so it's a good thing you spotted it!