When most New Jersey residents think about medical malpractice, they picture a doctor misdiagnosing a patient. In reality, that’s only one type of medical malpractice that happens. One of the most common types of medical malpractice is classified as medication errors.
What are medication errors?
Medical malpractice due to medication errors can happen when prescribing, dispensing or giving medication to patients. Many of these errors are completely preventable. Poor communication between doctors and patients is one of the leading reasons why medication errors happen. Some other reasons include medication abbreviations, drug names that sound alike and medications that actually look alike.
How to prevent medication errors?
As the most common causes of medication errors are discovered, it becomes easier to come up with ways to prevent these medication errors from happening in the first place. As a patient, you always should be your own advocate and researcher for medications that you take. Continuously ensure that the medication given to you by the pharmacy is what your doctor prescribed. Be sure to check the name of the medication as well as the dosage amount before taking any of it.
If you’re currently taking multiple medications, it’s highly advisable to talk to your doctor about any potential drug interactions. While it’s very common for a local pharmacy to fill a prescription with a generic medication to keep costs low, that generic medication may interact with other medications that you have. For this reason, it’s important that you speak to your local pharmacist about the medications you take to ensure that you’re not doing any harm to your body by taking them.
Medication errors happen more frequently than most people realize. The sad truth is that many of these errors can be easily prevented by having better communication between doctors, patients and pharmacists. If you believe that you’ve experienced a medication error, you may want to contact an attorney to understand what your legal options are.