Medical Malpractice

• Unintentional drug poisoning deaths on the rise

  Barry Doyle | February 14, 2007 10:49 PM | 0 CommentsCook County, IL

  A recent study looking at the number of deaths from prescription drug poisoning in the United States from 1999 to 2004 found that the death rate had increased 68% relative to the previous period studied.Deaths from prescription drugs now rank second to only to motor vehicle collisions as the cause of accidental deaths in the United States.The study found that an important cause of accidental...

• Dilantin overdose kills patient

  Barry Doyle | January 30, 2007 10:18 PM | 0 CommentsCook County, IL

  A Florida woman died recently of a massive overdose of dilantin while she was hospitalized. The attending physician ordered 800 milligrams of the drug, but a nurse gave her 8000 milligrams instead. Two to five grams is considered a fatal dosage.Heart failure was a cause of the patient's death. According to the Institute of Medicine, this was one of the estimated 400,000 patient deaths...

• Child dies from medication error

  Barry Doyle | January 18, 2007 7:00 PM | 0 CommentsCook County, IL

  A Cleveland-area child died after receiving an improperly-mixed medication as part of her chemotherapy regimen. The actual dose was mixed by a pharmacy technician. The error was uncovered as part of an investigation which followed the child's death.The work of the pharmacy technician was being supervised by a licensed pharmacist. However, he failed to discover the medication error before...

• Medication error kills cancer patient

  Barry Doyle | December 30, 2006 11:00 AM | 0 CommentsCook County, IL

  A cancer patient died after being given 10 times the dose of chemotherapy medication ordered by his doctor. The patient was to receive 50 mg of the medication ordered by his doctor, but was instead given a 500 mg dose. Four days later, the patient died. There were a number of allegations that the hospital staff tried to cover up the error.Fortunately, the hospital disclosed the error to the...

• Prescription Label Error Shakes up Mom

  Christina Cole | December 13, 2006 8:05 PM | 0 CommentsCook County, IL

  Becky Vanderlinden was quite surprised last week when she noticed the dose instructions on the bottle of antibiotics for her toddler. The toddler received five times the dose of antibiotics that her doctor had prescribed. Vanderlinden had called the pharmacy to check the dosage and was told that it was indeed correct - but the label was wrong. "I thought, "This seems like a huge amount of...