Prescription and Dispensing Errors
It is important that patients are given the medication that they need to treat their illness or condition. Failures to either prescribe the correct medication, or to ensure that the patient receives the correct medication, can causes avoidable injury and loss. You may be entitled to financial compensation if your GP, doctor or pharmacist has made a medication error and you have suffered harm as a result.
Prescription errors are usually made by doctors and can include the following issues:
- Failing to prescribe medication
- Prescribing incorrect medication
- Prescribing an incorrect dose
- Failure to consider allergies and/or drug interactions
- Failure to review the suitability of a repeat prescription
Dispensing errors are usually made by pharmacists who, despite a continual focus on the accuracy of their systems for checking their work, find that the sheer volume of prescriptions that they have to process lead to the following issues:
- Failing to correctly label medication
- Failing to give medication to a patient
- Giving the wrong medication to the patient
- Giving the wrong dosage to the patient
- Failing to keep or maintain accurate records
Each claim is different so our specialist medical negligence team will assess the extent and duration of the ill effect caused by the medication error. Whilst the majority of cases involve ill effects that are short term, the team has experience of claims concerning errors that had long term and even fatal consequences for the patient.
