Question 1

How Do Medication Errors Happen?

Accepted Answer

Usually, doctors and hospital staff are to blame for a medication error. In one case we handled, a 4-day-old baby with a heart defect was given the wrong dose of prostaglandin, a drug meant to control inflammation, and suffered cardiac arrest. It took 33 minutes for hospital staff to resuscitate her, and she suffered brain damage as a result, leading to lifelong cerebral palsy and cognitive disabilities.

Things like this should not happen, and they might not happen if hospitals set up safeguards and safety systems when it comes to prescribing, dispensing, or administering drugs.

In general, medication errors take a few different forms. These include:

Dosage Errors: This can happen if a doctor writes a prescription for a drug at a dosage that is too high or low, or if the wrong dose is administered by hospital staff. As the saying goes "wrong dose, wrong duration, wrong frequency, wrong interval" - all of these would be dosage errors.
Wrong Drug: Many drugs have similar names. If a patient receives the wrong drug, it delays proper treatment and can have other harmful side effects.
Wrong Method of Administration: Patients can be given drugs orally, rectally, topically, by injection (into different tissue layers), through an intravenous line, and by inhalation. When a patient is given the right drug in the wrong way, an adverse reaction could occur with serious or fatal consequences. For example, a nurse gives a patient a drug intravenously when it’s supposed to be delivered via injection to the muscle, and it causes cardiac arrest.
Overprescribing: Doctors who knowingly prescribe excessive doses, do not do background checks on at-risk patients, or give powerful pain-killers to someone who doesn’t need them, can harm their patients. Overprescription is a major factor in the current opioid crisis in America, and some doctors do receive "fees" from pharmaceutical companies for prescribing their drug. In several notable cases, doctors have been held liable for patients’ addiction or harm due to opioid abuse because they prescribed these dangerous drugs unnecessarily.
Wrong Patient: Prescriptions must be given to the correct patients. There have been cases where pharmacists fill an order for a patient, only to hand it to a patient with a similar name, who then suffers a severe reaction.
Allergy: Doctors need to ask about, research, and recognize allergies indicated by patients and then prescribe drugs accordingly. When a doctor fails to take allergies into account, he can cause serious harm to his patients.
Bad Drug Reaction: Multiple drugs can react to each other in a patient's body, which means a doctor needs to consider all drugs currently being taken by a patient before prescribing more. Failure to do so can lead to serious or deadly adverse effects when the drugs interact.

When someone takes the wrong medication, not only can it fail to treat what is wrong with that person - it can also cause additional harm. For children, an error in dosage or an allergic reaction is even more dangerous. A dosage error that might make an adult sick can easily be fatal for a child or infant.

Question 2

Who Is Liable for a Medication Error?

Accepted Answer

Liability, the legal responsibility for an injury or death, ultimately comes down to who acted in a negligent way to cause the injury or death. For medical malpractice claims, this could include a doctor who writes the wrong prescription or notes an incorrect dosage, a nurse who fails to properly read an order, or a pharmacist who fills a prescription incorrectly. It could be that multiple people had a chance to fix the mistake, yet did not pay attention. In that case, they all may be partially liable.

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How Do Medication Errors Happen?

Who Is Liable for a Medication Error?

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