Medical Malpractice Lawyers in NYC Can Help with Pharmacy Error Cases

It’s bad enough that someone has a medical condition, but sometimes this can be made even worse by pharmacy errors. There are times when pharmacies give the wrong medication or the wrong dosage, which would spell bad news for the patient. According to MedicineNet, “Approximately 1.3 million people are injured annually in the United States following so-called “medication errors”.” Meanwhile, CNN says that according to the National Patient Safety Foundation, “Every year in the United States, 30 million dispensing errors out of 3 billion prescriptions occur at outpatient pharmacies”. People who are victims of these situations should get help from medical malpractice lawyers in NYC.

While pharmacy errors aren’t that common, it’s always better to be on the safe side. One thing that patients can do is to open the medicine bottle right at the pharmacy and show the pills to the pharmacist to make sure that those are the correct ones. This is a simple enough task, but some people often want to be in and out of the pharmacy as quick as possible and might not even think about doing this. This simple task, however, can go a long way to ensuring that patients get the right medicine.

Another thing that patients can do is to double check with the doctor regarding the name of the drug that’s being prescribed, as well as the required dosage. At the pharmacy, be sure that they give you only what was prescribed and nothing else. If the drug looks different than expected, then patients should tell the pharmacist or their doctor about this to make sure there aren’t any mix-ups.

In such a case where the patient has already taken the wrong medication and suffered from it, they can sue the pharmacy for prescription errors. The errors that can lead to a lawsuit include wrong medication, wrong dosage of the right medication, failure to foresee dangerous complications such as drug interaction, failure to warn of the dangerous side effects and marketing unsafe medications.

It’s not just the pharmacist who’s liable for the error; it can also be the doctor or even the drug company that has endorsed and supplied potentially dangerous drugs. These cases would require a lot of evidence and support from medical experts. For this, it is important to have the help of an NYC medical malpractice lawyer such as one from the Law Offices of Joseph Lichtenstein. Such practices who specialize in this area and have dealt with countless cases, so trust in them to help you seek due compensation.

Sources:

Don’t be a victim of pharmacy errors, CNN, October 30, 2007

The Most Common Medication Errors, MedicineNet