You expect medical staff in Kentucky to provide the best care possible. That’s why it’s so traumatic when medication errors occur, especially when you consider how easily many of these errors could have been prevented. The Mayo Clinic explains common medication errors, why they happen, and how they can be avoided.
Medication errors happen for all sorts of reasons. For instance, your doctor may transpose the names of two different drugs when filling out your prescription. Your prescription may also contain illegible writing, which can lead to problems at the pharmacy. The pharmacist filling the prescription may also make a mistake, even when provided with the right information. Errors providing medicine also occur within a hospital setting, and this can entail getting the wrong dose of medication or the wrong medication altogether.
An error can be extremely serious depending on its nature. If you’re given the wrong medicine your underlying health issue won’t be treated. Additionally, the drug you are given could interact with another medicine you’re taking, which can result in a number of ill-effects. You could even receive more than the recommended dose, which may cause serious health problems requiring immediate medical assistance.
So, what can you do about medication errors? Ask your doctor lots of questions when prescribed a drug. Get the name, the dose, what it’s being used to treat, how long it should be taken, what to do about a missed dose, what side effects are possible, and how it may interact with other medications. You can also ask your health care provider what steps are taken to reduce the possibility of an error. Many offices use medication reconciliation, which entails reviewing patient drug lists against newly provided prescriptions.