Savvy Consumer: Medication Mix-Ups
July 28, 2006 — -- Every year, 1.5 million Americans are injured or killed by medication mix-ups. And if you land in the hospital for some reason, errors there are so frequent you could be subjected to a new one every day of your stay. Those heart-stopping statistics come courtesy of a new report by the prestigious Institute of Medicine.
Seven-year-old Zachary K. has a rare genetic disease that weakens his immune system. So he takes a small dose of antibiotics every day to try to ward off illness. At one point, Zach's mom, Cynthia, noticed that his pills looked different. She was right. Turns out, the pharmacy had dispensed the right pills in the wrong strength -- double strength. Cynthia complained to the pharmacy, turned in the bad bottle and thought nothing more of it. Until it happened again a month later. The same pharmacy had made the same mistake twice.
Spencer P. suffers from serious sinus problems. His doctor prescribed a new medication and he took it with high hopes. But Spencer immediately suffered devastating side effects: dizziness, difficulty breathing and tightness in his chest. He missed several shifts at his day job and had to quit his night job. Spencer kept taking the medication, hoping the side effects would wear off and the drug would begin to work. After a month, he couldn't take it anymore and went to see his doctor. What a shock! The doctor had prescribed a nasal spray called "Flonase." The pharmacy had dispensed a prostate drug called "Flomax."
Why do medication mix-ups like this happen? For one thing, there are more prescription drugs on the market than ever before, an awful lot for a pharmacist to remember. To make matters worse, some of them have similar names -- like Flonase and Flomax, Celebrex and Cerebyx, Lamisil and Lamictal. If a prescription is called in -- or written in a doctor's famously messy handwriting -- it's easy to see how a pharmacist could get it wrong. Plus that pharmacist is probably overworked. Prescription drug use has doubled while the number of pharmacists has remained the same.
