Types Of Dosing And Prescription Mistakes: Are You Eligible For Compensation?

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Some of the most common types of medical injury lawsuits are the result of dosing or prescription errors on the behalf of the physician, nurse, or other medical staff. If you were injured because of a medication error or dosing mistakes, you could recover some damages. Here's what you need to know about dosing mistakes and what type of compensation you be eligible for.

Allergies and Reactions

There are many types of ways that people can be injured by medications. Sometimes, you can experience injury through allergies or bad reactions to medications. For example, some people might experience a bad reaction to a vaccination. Others might get swollen joints and rashes after taking antibiotics.

Can you sue for these reactions? Most of the time, there is not grounds for a lawsuit for a reaction to common medications. Usually, you get a printout of the risks of taking a certain type of medicine, and your pharmacist might even take you aside to explain about the medication and bad side effects to watch for.

However, you might be able to sue for compensation if you are given a medicine that you have declared an allergy for. For example, if you are allergic to penicillin, your doctor knows you are allergic, but they give you a penicillin-based medicine anyway, this could be a malpractice case. 

Wrong Medication Types

Sometimes, you might receive the wrong prescription or medication type altogether. How does a mistake like this happen? There are a number of ways that you might end up with the wrong medication:

1. You are given a prescription that is meant to go to somebody else. Your chart might get switched with another patient's, your samples might have been labeled incorrectly, or another patient might even share your same name. 
2. Your physician mixes up the names or types of medications because they are similar in sound or type. Doctors and physician assistants can make mistakes, especially when under stress. 
3. The medications were shipped or labeled incorrectly, so you were given the wrong medicine when the pharmacy thought they were giving the right one. 

These types of errors all point to some type of negligence. For example, if you get somebody else's prescription, the hospital or doctor's office was negligent in keeping records and keeping patient needs separate. Many offices might have a policy of asking your name, birthday, and address before giving any medicines in order to prevent any mix-ups. 

If the patient load is so heavy that the doctor is too stressed to realize they are giving the wrong medication name on a script, that points to poor management or bad patient scheduling. If the medications were not labeled or shipped properly, the liability is on the pharmacy or drug company for the mistake. 

You can seek compensation on two fronts for this problem. If you have the wrong medicine, your current health problem is not being treated. It could get worse, causing you pain and even further permanent injury. If the wrong medication is strong or has serious side effects, or if it interacts with another medication you take, you also could experience a serious injury. 

Harmful Dose Administration

So if you have the right medicine, how else can you become injured? You might receive too much or too little of a medication, which makes your condition worse or ends up being toxic to your system. Children might be given too much or a certain medicine or your prescription might not be properly compounded. The medicine might also be administered wrongly, such as a crushed pill instead of a whole pill, which causes problems with when the medication is released in your system. 

In all of the above cases, you need to prove your problem was from the medication and that the reason you have that problem is through improper storage, administration, or regulation or the medication in question. For more information, contact a medical malpractice attorney at a firm such as R.J. Marzella & Associates, P.C. 

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18 December 2018