Common Drugs that are Errorly Prescribed
In a hospital institution, errors and blunders that led to patients’ harm with the management or staff’s negligence or inadequancies. These adverse group of actions are called medical errors, and the provision of law against these actions through a systematic claim is called medical malpractice, specifically, it refers to a legal action when a medical or healthcare professional has committed action that dealt harm to the patient or people who are under their care by means of negligence or omission or anything that is below the standards of care on their profession.
Forms of medical malpractice are misdiagnosis, surgical errors, maltreatment or incorrect treatment, birth injuries, wrong categorization of a cancer, medication errors such as overdosage, anesthesia errors and etc.
One of those many form of medication error is prescription error, similar to other form of medical malpractice, it is common but could be preventable. Most cases of prescription errors recorded has resulted in moderate to none harm for patient but on extreme cases, considering a patient’s condition, it could deal severe harm or death. In retrospect, prescription errors has a rate of 8.9 per 100 medicine orders as observed in hospitals and 4.9% in total prescribed medicine.
Some Common Medicines that are errorly Prescribed
Anticoagulants
Warfarin is a drug acting as a anticoagulants. Oral warfarin is a newer drug that is a more direct anticoagulants, it is applied through injecting but there are some reported cases where injected heparin and lower levels of heparin have been involved in prescription error accidents that had dealt fatal casualties and harm.
One case was a patient continued their warfarin prescription but have missed their three consecutive anticoagulants appointments. To prevent this complex predicant and posing risk, patient should be educated how to administer their anticoagulant medicine safely and what are its risks when missed one or when used wrongly and should be encouraged to attend anticoagulation clinic daily if possible.
Active blood monitoring required Drugs
Drugs such as clozapine, digoxin, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, gentamicin, lithium, loop diuretics, clozapine, methotrexate and mirtazapine do require a maintenance and active monitoring of patient’s blood pressure when consumed or should be used under a specific body condition, and when conditions are not met could deal harm or even death. There was one case where an 80-year old patient that has been taking long term medicines to treat hypertension was once didn’t received any urea and electrolyte in over a year and so and was put at risk for kidney malfunction.
For medical professionals and institutions, they should check previous patients who have been prescribed with medicines that requires constant monitoring and should continue to receive monitoring.
Opioid Analgensics
Opioid-based drugs are dangerous when errorly prescribed such as morphine, codeine, fentanyl, oxycodone, and methadone as there were more than 450 patients have died after being unsafely prescribed with opioid medicines at Gosport War Hospital. Overdosage wa a problem on the other hand as in the previous reports, there was a patient that was prescribed with 60mg morphine twice a day for arthitic pain and it resulted for the patient to hallucinate and confused and was admitted for 6 days in the hospital.
Nonsteroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs account for more than 30% of hospital admissions for bleeding, stroke, heart attack, and kidney damages. If these drugs are not paired with gastric protection drugs, it could result to the health conditions above, as high dosage of these specific drugs could pose harm. The best and efficient way to reduce the risk of NSAIDs is to avoid prescribing it to older people and people who are at the same risk as older poeple.
Call Ryan Injury Lawyers
If one’s self or family member has been involved in an accident and has experienced injury due to someone’s negligence, you can hire an injury lawyer in the hopes to grant you a compensation pay and offers a lot of options such as MedPay for covering medical bills as it is not easy to pay hefty amount of bills.
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