Medication Error Lawyer Philadelphia Pennsylvania

Medication or prescription medication errors occur with frightening frequency. These errors can be made in doctor's offices, hospitals, or pharmacies, and can lead to severe consequences for the patient consuming the medication. Medication errors are responsible for approximately a quarter of medical malpractice cases, with failure to administer the proper dosage the most common error. It is common that the failure to administer the proper dosage results from handwriting transcription errors. In some cases, handwriting errors can only delay the time until patients receive their prescribed drug. At worst, a misread order can lead to serious injury or death.

Another common prescription error is mixing up drug names. Many prescription drugs have similar-sounding names. The physician and pharmacist need to be vigilant about ensuring they are not negligent in prescribing or dispensing the wrong medication. Name confusion is among the most common causes of prescription errors. A famous example is the confusion between the epilepsy drug Lamictal and antifungal drug Lamisil. Several years ago, pharmacies consistently confused the names of the two prescription drugs prompting the FDA and Glaxo to send letters to doctors advising of the confusion. Usually, there is no significant injury but with the wrong drug or the wrong patient, the injuries can be catastrophic or fatal. With the Lamictal/Lamisil confustion, the consequences were especially severe for epileptic patients who were receiving Lamisil which did not do anything to help epileptic patients control their seizures. Patients receiving Lamictal by mistake were at risk for such side effects as blood pressure problems, rashes, and other troubling but not severe side effects.

In hospital settings, nurses bear primary responsibility for providing medication, so nurses — along with the hospital they work for and the prescribing physicians — are the medical professionals most frequently charged with malpractice. The Lassen Law Firm, Philadelphia medical malpractice attorneys, provide experienced counsel and dedicated advocacy focused on helping clients recover maximum compensation for injuries and wrongful death caused by negligent care.

What is a medication error?

When a hospital lacks adequate medical personnel, nurses may sometimes be called to work in other units where they may not be familiar with the medications. A nurse can easily mix up medications or fail to familiarize herself with the medications currently taken by a particular patient. For example, a nurse that normally works in the newborn nursery unit may be asked to work on an adult floor even if the nurse does not have experience with adult medications and correct dosages. Many adult medications need vital signs or blood pressure taken before and after medication administration. A nurse who normally works with newborns may not be aware of these procedures or be familiar with adult orthopedic, cancer, pain, cardiac or congestive heart failure medicines. In many cases, a nurse in such situations administers the medications to adult patients anyway. Depending on what medication is received, test results may need to be obtained before a medication is given. The Lassen Law Firm helps people hurt by medication errors resulting from the negligence of doctors and nurses recover compensation in cases involving:

Overdose
Dangerous drug combinations
Failure to monitor dosages
Allergic reactions
Wrong instructions
Prescription mix-ups
Doctor writing wrong prescription
Doctor writing an illegible prescription
Pharmacy dispensing wrong medication
Doctor prescribing wrong medication combinations
Doctor not paying attention to side effects and patient's history
Pharmacy mixing up names on medications

All of the above mentioned errors result from one thing: negligence. In all of the aforementioned cases, negligence on behalf of the doctor, hospital, or pharmacy would have led to the patient receiving the wrong medication, and possibly suffering from severe, if not fatal, physical complications. For this reason, once a person has suffered from a medication error, it is always advisable that the person review his/her legal options with a credible medical malpractice attorney. A medical malpractice lawyer can help the victim recover monetary compensation for any injuries related to errors that were made by the victim's medical care providers. Additionally, a malpractice lawyer can provide the person with the resources and counsel he/she needs to build a strong, successful case against his/her negligent medical care provider. The Lassen Law Firm helps patients who were subject to medication errors recover compensation for their losses.

Medication Errors Statistics

The FDA reports that:

1.3 million people are injured annually in the United States following medication errors.
About 7,000 of those people die each year from medication errors.
Adverse drug events cause more than 770,000 injuries and deaths each year.
Patients who suffered unintended drug events remained in the hospital an average of 8 to 12 days longer than patients who did not experience such mistakes.
About two out of every 100 admissions experienced a preventable adverse drug reaction event. Infusion devices account for up to 35% of all medication errors that result in significant harm.
The most common errors are manually programming incorrect infusion parameters, failure to ensure the right patient receives the right medication, and tampering of infusion parameters by unauthorized users.
The most common error is manually programming infusion parameters (e.g. rate, dose, drug, etc.) into the device.

More people die annually from medication errors than from on the job injuries, according to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention. Some of the errors are harmless to the patients, but the majority of cases involve severe side effects, pain and serious health risks to the person taking the medication. If you have been the victim of medical malpractice, including medication and prescription drug errors, please call the Lassen Law Firm, Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawyers, to learn about your rights to sue those responsible for your injuries.

Medical Malpractice Lawyer Pennsylvania

If you have been a victim of a medication error, the last thing you or your family should have to worry about is your financial security. At the Lassen Law Firm, we believe that our clients should be allowed to focus on getting better without having to stress over their future well-being. We are skilled Philadelphia personal injury attorneys who will aggressively fight for maximum recovery of damages for our clients' medical malpractice cases.

The Lassen Law Firm only deducts a 29% contingency fee, not the standard 45% like other firms. We serve ALL of Pennsylvania. We can sign you up over the phone and start working on your case today.

Stop Searching. Start Calling. 215-510-6755.

Authored by: Christian Lassen