Pharmacy dispensing wrong medication

[laurajp91]

I can’t go into too much detail but basically my daughter was prescribed the wrong medication by a pharmacist she was under the care of nurses when administering the medicine so I couldn’t check the medicine but she ended up extremely poorly it was a sedating medication she was given and she could have died. I’m looking into suing the pharmacy has anyone ever done this?

Suing? Has she suffered any lasting damage? Was she in hospital at the time? I would imagine that given how serious the effect was that the incident is already being investigated. You definitely need to raise a complaint and ensure that the investigation is carried out.

Was this in a hospital?

Medication is prescribed by a doctor. Dispenses normally dispense it and then it is checked by a pharmacist. If administered by a nurse, they should have checked also and medication signed for.

Are you sure where the error occurred? i.e. was it a doctors error or the dispenser, pharmacist and nurses that got it wrong?

Either way, your first step is to put in a formal complaint.

I hope your daughter is OK now.

Was this a prescription or over the counter medication?

Pharmacists do not "prescribe", rather they dispense and advise.

Did the nurse not notice the wrong medication or was this, in fact, the medication prescribed by a doctor?

What monetary costs have there been or will there be in the future due to this error?

There are several things that need clarifying before any real advice can be given.

Thanks for the replies. It was incorrectly dispensed by the pharmacy. The correct medicine label and dose was placed on the box but the boxed clearly showed an incorrect medicine. If that makes sense. It’s looks like It could be a good case the pharmacy company have admitted that it should not have happened. It was an emergency prescription because she had run out of her normal reflux medicine