In New York, there is a tightly packed population density. Among the people there, it is easy to imagine that you might get lost in the shuffle of an overburdened medical care system.
Unfortunately, errors born from negligence and mistakes can happen to anyone. Among the most common are medication errors, which occur anywhere from prescription to dispensing.
Errors from doctors and pharmacists
Mayo Clinic examines the medication errors that most commonly occur. One common source of errors are doctors, and the other are pharmacists. Errors tend to happen when your medication is initially prescribed or when a pharmacist is getting it prepared for you.
When an error occurs on the doctor’s end, it is often due to the doctor forgetting other medications or conditions you have. They mistakenly prescribe medicine that will react with these things in a bad way.
As for errors on the pharmacist side, this often happens when medicines get mixed up. A doctor’s handwriting may be near-indecipherable. The pills may resemble another brand or medication.
Primary reasons for mistakes
What are some other ways that medication errors happen? There are a few primary reasons for them, including:
- Miscommunication between you and your doctor or pharmacist
- Miscommunication between your doctors, or a doctor and pharmacist
- Medical abbreviations or handwriting that are hard to decipher
- Medications that appear similar to each other
- Medication names that sound similar
It is rare for doctors or medical staff to act maliciously. Often, negligence is accidental, caused by an overburdened staff without enough resources. Unfortunately, these mistakes can sometimes cause a patient severe harm or worse.