Cook County Personal Injury Lawyer - Medical Malpractice

Mother Sues After Four-Month Old Died From Cough Medicine

Jenny Albano — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:49:35 GMT

Dimitria Alvarez's four-month old son died from taking over-the-counter cough and cold medicines on Oct. 8, 2001, and she has since sued the two sued two distributors of the drugs, claiming they should have known the dangers of the main ingredient and cautioned consumers.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday is one of the first since Federal Drug Administration hearings last month where health experts testified that parents should not give children younger than 6 such medicines because they don't work and can be harmful.

Alvarez gave her son Tylenol Cold Decongestant Plus Cough and Walgreen-brand Pediatric Drops-Cough Plus Cold, which both contain dextromethorphan. According to the coroner the 4 moth old, Devon Mehleberg-Alvarez, died from dextromethorphan intoxication.

The lawsuit, filed in Lake County Circuit Court in Illinois, names Walgreen Co. and McNeil, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, saying the companies knew of the dangers of the ingredient and failed to caution consumers.

The spokesperson for Walgreens stated that the company believes the child's death may have been due to the two medicines given one after the other. The drugs have been found to be safe by the FDA if used as directed.

Drug makers have pulled cold medicines used for babies and toddlers off the market on Oct. 11, after the FDA discovered reported deaths linked to the medicines in recent years, mostly from unintentional overdoses.

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Defective and Dangerous Products.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jenny Albano

Hospital sued for medication error

Barry Doyle — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:30:00 GMT

A Missouri hospital has been sued by the parents of one of its patients after the 8-year old girl received the wrong medication. The girl had been prescribed israpidine but was given risperdal instead.

The girl suffered brain damage and kidney damage and will eventually require a kidney transplant.

"Sound-alike" medications cause the potential for medication errors. This arises from the custom in the medical field of the doctor giving oral orders to the staff which are entered in written record later, sometimes without close inspection. The oral orders are then sometimes called into the pharmacy, resulting in further potential for error.

The potential for error engendered by sound-alike medications is well recognzied in the pharmacy field, and should trigger protocols to ensure that only the right medication is dispensed. Many times, when the "wrong" medication is ordered at its normal dose, it is outside the normal therapeutic range for that medication's normal use. Also, it is inappropriate for that diagnosis, even with so-called "off-label" uses. All of these things should trigger a call from the pharamcy to the doctor to ensure that the proper medication is dispensed.

Sound alike medication errors such as this should be prevented through the regular use of protocols designed to ensure the safety of patients.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Judge rules medication errors caused by workload

Barry Doyle — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:52:33 GMT

At a recent administrative law hearing for unemployment benefits, a judge ruled that a nurse's discharge was not for cause -- even though she made many errors in the care of patients under her charge -- because the errors were the result of the multiple responsibilities that had been placed on the nurse. Therefore, the judge awrded unemployment benefits that the hospital had been contesting.

The errors cited by the hospital included a three hour delay in administering medication to a man who suffering from sepsis, giving one patient the medication at a rate six times higher than was ordered, and

Haste or inadequate time to complete the work is a common factor in causing medication errors, and is one of the most commonly cited causes in many studies analyzing prescription medication errors.

While academics have noted its role in producing medication errors, it is interesting in this case to see the judge take the whole picture into account and reach the conclusion that workload, not incompetence, was the cause of these errors.

This places the onus on medication errors on employers who overload the nurses and pharmacists with too much work to allow them to concentrate on the crucial tasks they have to complete: getting the right medication to the right patient in the right dose by the right means at the right time. Deviation from any of the so-called "Five R's" can result in serious harm to the patient.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Medication dispensing errors in Texas

Barry Doyle — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:00:00 GMT

A Houston TV station ran a segement recently on the occurrence of medication dispensing errors at local pharmacies, and the apparently lax discipline of pharamcists who make dispensing errors.

In one instance, a cancer patient was prescribed medication to be taken four time per week, but was given instructions by the pharamcist to take four times daily. The cancer patient suffered permanent kidney damage.

Customers depend on their pharamcists to give them the right medication with the right instructions. This is especially true where the customer is taking a new medication. Most customers are unfamilar with the size, color, and shape of whatever medication has been ordered for them, and depend on the pharmacist to get the right medication into the bottle that they take home.

When they are not given the proper medication or proper instructions, the customer is placed at risk for serious adverse reactions from the medication provided to them.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Medication error kills patient

Barry Doyle — Mon, 21 May 2007 08:00:00 GMT

A Montana nurse admitted to a coroner's inquest that she adminstered a wrong medication to a patient who died shortly after receiving the drug. The patient came to trhe emergency room of the hospital with difficulty breathing. The doctor ordered lasix, a diuretic, to help draw out fluid that may have been contributing the respiratory problems.

Instead of taking the lasix from the pharmacy, she took potassium from the shelf below and gave it to the patient. The patient died shortly thereafter from cardiac dysrythmia due to potassium toxicity.

There are two elements to the cause of this patient's death: one is a simple nursing error, the other is a human factors issue.

Nurses are trained to check the "5 R's" before giving medication to a patient: right patient, right drug, right time, right dose, and right means. In this case, the drug was not the right drug, and there was a fatal result.

The human factors aspect of the case reltes to how the medication was stored at the hospital. At the inquest, it came out that the potassium and the lasix were both stored in a cabinet at below waist level, which made it more difficult for the nursing staff to make sure that they were getting the right medication out of the pharmacy.

To their credit, both the nurse and the hospital admitted the error instead of trying to cover it up, and the hospital is taking steps to prevent a recurrence.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Drug mixing error kills three

Barry Doyle — Tue, 01 May 2007 09:00:00 GMT

An employee in a drug compounding pharmacy who was mixing a medication made an error which resulted in a drug being sent to a clinic in a form which was 10 times more potent than intended. The medication was called colchicine, which is normally used to treat gout. It was being used in the clinic to treat back pain, which is off-lbael use of the drug.

The way that the medication works is that it slows the division of cells, thereby reducing the inflammation from the gout. At the dose in which it was mixed, it prevented cell division all together, resulting in the death of three patients who took the medication.

The most interesting item in this story is not the error itself -- it is pretty common type of error due to the use of the metric system in compounding medications, and systems should be in place to prevent this kind of error. The truly interesting item is that the person responsible for the error was described as an "employee" and not a pharmacist or a pharmacy technician. This raises questions about the training, qualifications, and supervision of the person compounding this batch of medication. These are questions that three families will want answered.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Potassium overdose kills patient

Barry Doyle — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:00:00 GMT

A Philadelphia family has filed suit against a local hospital after their father died following heart surgery.

Two hours after having bypass surgery, the man had a fatal heart attack. The man's daughter, a doctor, reviewed his chart and saw that he was given an excessive amount of potassium, and she believes that this led to his death.

Nurses are taught that they need to check their "R's" before giving medication. These are: right patient, right drug, right dosage, and right method. These checks are intended to assure patient safety. When followed, these would eliminate many medication errors in hospitals.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Misfill leads to stroke and death

Barry Doyle — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 08:17:19 GMT

A teenage pharmacy technician filled a prescription with 10 times the dose of coumadin a customer was supposed to receive. The pharmacist on duty, charged with checking the work of the technician, failed to catch the error and dispensed the prescription to the customer.

The customer suffered a massive stroke due to the overdose of coumadin. She had been suffering from Stage II breast cancer, but was forced to interrupt her chemotherapy regimen due to the stroke. She eventually died from the untreated cancer.

One of the key things a pharmacy must do is ensure that the customer gets the proper dosage. When a customer is provided too large (or too small) of a dose of medication, there can be serious consequences, especially when the medication is taken over an extended period of time.

The potential for this exact kind of error, providing ten times too much, is one which the pharmacy industry is well aware of. It generally is the result of a math or transcription error where the decimal point is not properly placed. All pharmacists are trained to scrupulously check for this to ensure that the customer receives the proper dosage of medication. This is the kind of error which never should have happened.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Heart patient given wrong medication

Barry Doyle — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 06:30:00 GMT

Walgreen's has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit which alleges that a pharmacist provided a customer with a medication called amicar instead of the medication prescribed by his doctor, omacor.

The man had just undergone a cardiac catheterization and was prescribed omacor to lower his cholesterol. Amicar is intended to control bleeding and is inappropriate for a person who has undergone a cardiac catheterization.

The lawsuit claims that he was forced to undergo a quadruple bypass as a result of being given the incorrect medication.

One of the recognized risks in dispensing medications is that posed by "sound alike" medications -- that is, medications with names that sound alike. To prevent this kind of error, most pharmacies will have reminders of the sound alikes posted where the medication is stored. Also, the pharmacist has an obligation to check the medication to ensure that it is appropriate for the condition being treated.

In situations where there is a sound alike medication being dispensed for a condition for which it is not indicated, the pharmacist must contact the doctor to ensure that he is dispensing the appropriate medication.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle

Misfilled medication results in miscarriage

Barry Doyle — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 07:30:00 GMT

A Texas woman recently was given ulcer medication instead of the prenatal vitamins which her doctor had ordered. The ulcer medication had been prescribed for a woman with a similar name.

After taking the ulcer medication, she began to experience severe pain and went to the emergency room. There she learned that she had a miscarriage.

One of the comments in the article mentioned the hectic pace and nature of pharmacy work. Pharmacists do have a busy work day, and unfortunately are frequently interrupted while doing work which requires a high degree of attention to detail.

Nonetheless, every pharmacy has procedures and checks in place which, if followed, should prevent this kind of error from occurring. Misfilled medications are "never events" which means that there is no acceptable excuse for their occurrence.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Barry Doyle