When your doctor prescribes you medication, you generally trust that he knows what he is talking about. So you take the prescription to the pharmacy (again, trusting that the pharmacists know what they’re doing), pick them up, and take them as prescribed on the bottle. But how often do you actually check that the medication prescribed is intended for your ailment, or that the prescription you dropped off is the prescription you picked up, or even if the pills in the bottle match the description of the prescription pills on the warning label? The US has experienced a dramatic rise in medication-related injuries within the last few years, making the need for all three of these checks that much more important.
The amount of emergency room and hospitalizations caused by prescription errors has increased from 1.2 million in 2004 to roughly 2.5 million in 2012, nationwide. These injuries, ranging from rashes and shortness of breath, to heart, liver, and kidney failure, were all a result of prescription drug side effects and overdoses. These effects were related to one or more of the following:
Unintended Overdose:
- Wrongfully Prescribed Dose – Victims followed the dose on the bottle, even though it was wrongfully prescribed
- Dose Miscommunication – Victims were told by their doctor to take one pill twice a day, but the prescription said two pills twice a day. Language barriers may cause problems, as well (“once” means 11 in Spanish)
- Pharmacy Filled Wrong Prescription – The description of the pill prescribed on the label doesn’t match the pill inside the bottle
- Pharmacy Filled Wrong Dose – The dose was supposed to be 25mg but was filled with 75mg
- Label Error – The medication label didn’t accurately inform about drug and side effects of overuse