U.S. Pharmacy Errors: Unreported Epidemic?

Of course pharmacists make mistakes….they too are human! We need to develop a system that recognizes that humans make errors, and has a mechanism for checking work so that WHEN errors are made, they are recognized before patient harm takes place.

I had a similar experience at Walgreens in 2003 when my 4 year old was diagnosed with leukemia. The pharmacist reversed the dosage amounts of his dexamethasone and his mexotrethate. Luckily, I caught the error at home that night before I gave him the dosages since I had just spent the previous week in the hospital observing the medicines he was taking. Likewise, the pharmacist who made the mistake is still working at the Walgreens in Littleton, Colorado. I don’t what the answer is, but this definately needs to be governed and there need to be swift and severe consequences when errors are made. At the very least the pharmacists need to be fired.

The biggest treat against the public these days out there are the pharmaceutical companies, but yet there are a bunch of idiots out there that can’t understand this. Watch T.V. these days and you are barraged with parmaceutical commercials for this pain or for that other crap. Big Tabacco is nothing, nothing, compaired to these folks. Yeah, smoking is killing people, bull, legal drugs are killing people. Eliminate all pharmaceutical commercials and we’ed live a healthier life.

This article certainly puts a one-sided spin on the issue. I’m not saying Pharmacists are innocent, but they face overwhelming numbers of prescriptions to fill each day. Errors are bound to occur. It is unfortunate that mistakes happen and people get hurt, and yes Walgreens should apologize. But, has anyone taken a survey on how many mistakes Pharmacists prevent? For example, how many times does a Doctor write a prescription for a drug that has an adverse side effect with another drug the patient is taking?
It is up to the Pharmacist to catch this mistake. Also, Pharmacists are overworked, and probably underpaid. I would argue that a Pharmacist is a more trusted profession than a Doctor, but we don’t take care of them as we do the medical professions. How about enacting legislation that limits the numbers or hours a Pharmacists can work in a day. There is no limit now, and often they work for 12 hours at a time with no breaks. There are two sides to this story, let’s be fair and tell both of them!

A Walgreens pharmacist in GA gave me the wrong medication. I had terrible side effects. When I told the pharmacist about his mistake he offered no apology. He simply said “It looked right.” I was furious. At least acknowledge the mistake and apologize for it.

This REALLY bothers me. To me, it means that pharmacists are now as poorly-trained and ignorant as the recent generation of physicians.
I expect pharmacists to KNOW the medications they dispense inside and out, just as I expect doctors to know that information. I expect pharmacists to know the major classes of drugs and what they are used for. I expect them to offer to discuss this information with the patient, and to ask a question or two to double check.
I’m not demanding that physicians or pharmacists be held to a higher standard; I’m asking that they be held to the standards I have for myself even as a patient. Okay, so I work in pharmacology (and previously worked in physiology) research. Okay, so I eat, breathe and excrete this stuff. But if I, with only a bachelor’s degree, have to know and master this material, I think it’s proper to expect others who may endanger lives with their ignorance of that material to know and master it as well. Furthermore, I know that the material is required for graduation from medical or pharmacy school. Is it so unreasonable to expect physicians and pharmacists to pay attention and remember what they learned? I think not.

I am a recent graduate of pharmacy school. I work in a hospital now, but I worked retail pharmacy as a student from 2000-2006.
I see both sides of this issue..
First of all, for all of you who say you were treated poorly by the pharmacist after a mistake was made, I apologize. At the store I worked, we made a couple mistakes during my employment there (nothing serious, thankfully). We would typically refund the patient and apologize profusely.
There are typically a lot of safety measure in place and some of these errors may have been prevented if the pharmacist was thoroughly checking each prescription, HOWEVER…Let me explain a little what life behind a pharmacy counter is like. Often, there is only 1 pharmacist working (unless it is a big store). The technicians field the phone calls, work the register, get the meds off the shelf and count them, and label everything for the pharmacist to check. Meanwhile, the phone is ringing off the hook with people asking for the pharmacist (sometimes legit questions, other times it’s a refill request that you don’t need a pharmacist for), you have 2 patients at the counter with questions, you’re on the phone with an insurance company trying to get a claim to go through, people ask how much longer it is going to be and watch you the entire time you’re filling a prescription, and then you have to call the MD about a prescription that doesn’t look right. Then you have to worry about the order and paperwork. You’re expected to do all of this, properly verify 400 prescriptions, and remain friendly and personable. It’s a very high stress situation, and errors unfortunately do go through.

I to received the wrong perscription for my 7 yr old son from WALGREENS, It was for another patient with the same last name. It was for muscle and joint relief they said. I realized the error after going home and was about to give it to my son, I called them and they said they were extremely busy and would take a message and tac it to their message board, and I can expect to hear from them by tommorrow!!!

It is easy to shed bad light on any type of profession. Obviously newscasters can cut and chop interviews and distort facts in order to get the story they already have planned in their head.
Do pharmacists make mistakes? Sure. This is no shocking fact. Do doctors make mistakes? Does… oh I don’t know… the president of our country make mistakes? Yes and obviously yes.
The stories told in this interview are tragic and unfortunate. They are definetly worthy of a heartfelt apology and even a news broadcast. Are pharmacists villians? Harldy. Compare the few tragedies with the millions/billions of smooth and even beneficial prescription transactions and there isn’t much of a story.

i would like to say that i have had to take many prescriptions to the pharmacy for a child or family member, and i have to say the error also lies with the dr writing the prescription also. Dr’s themselves have such terrible handwriting, it seems these pharmacist also have to read what they have written. i know the dr’s have told me what the precrition is and we as consumers need to also pay attention to what the dr’s are telling us and verify the drug before we leave just in case. we are all human, and need to leave alittle more room for error. this couple got 21 million dollars, no amount of money can say i am SORRY, however that is how corporate america says I’M SORRY.

As a pharmacist for several years with experience in both retail and hospital pharmacies, I can certainly identify with the commentary provided earlier by Kristen. To everyone who has experienced a medication misadventure due to pharmacy errors, I sincerely apologize. Most pharmacists work diligently to prevent errors, and are absolutely devastated if an error occurs during their service. To chalk it up to “human error” is just not a valid excuse–I agree that there is no plausible “excuse” when a loved one is caused needless harm. The point that is missing in this blog is the fact that most of these errors occur because the system is broken. To expect a pharmacist to work 12-14 hour shifts without lunch or bathroom breaks and fulfill a minimum quota of prescriptions while answering 7 phone lines and a drive-thru window with insufficient staffing AND be 100% error-free is unreasonable and certainly unsafe—this is why I left retail pharmacy. It is my sincere belief that the drug store chain, not the individual pharmacist forced to work in this environment, should be held accountable for criminal and civil repercussions when errors are made that harm patients—only then might the system repair itself.

Before completely blaming the Pharmacists, some of these posters should sign affidavits that they have never, ever made an important mistake. Nope, not one.
Pharmacists are also human (most of them, anyway), and will make errors. There’s no getting around it. “Fire the pharmacist!” cries will only guarantee that no one trains to be pharmacists any more, and the next thing you know, Billy the checkout bagger is filling your prescription (no offense, Billy). Or, prices go even higher as pharmacies pay higher and higher salaries, trying to attract Pharmacists back to the industry.
Some pharmacies have double-check protocols in place where a 2nd trained employee must verify the prescription was filled correctly. This should be federally mandated for all pharmacies. It must include as a minimum: 1) frequent mandated breaks in the work day, 2) a second, properly trained employee verifies that a) the prescription has been filled as ordered, and b) the prescription is appropriate for the patient. This must be done as an *entirely* independent step to be effective.
Finally, we as patients or parents have to check the results, also. The dangers are too great not to.

I’m a current pharmacy student. I just want to echo the recent graduate’s comments. Retail pharmacy is a very high stress job situation. The number of medications that exist, from the very popular to the very obscure is almost limitless. Doctors don’t always know how medications come, how to dose them, or their drug or disease state interactions. We do the best that we humanly can. In between answering 3 phone lines, taking care of the patients at prescription drop off and at pick up, dealing with the drive through, calling insurance companies, verifying hundreds of prescriptions a day, and counseling patients on prescriptions and many OTC questions, pharmacists still manage to catch thousands of errors daily. Studies have shown that pharmacists’ involvement in medication management has actually saved hundreds of millions of dollars by preventing medication related errors. While sadly, the occasional error does occur, I would challenge anyone to name a profession that never had a flaw. I do not know any of my peers that would ever intentionally harm a patient. We got into this profession to help people, not to hurt them. To state that we are in any way criminals for a mistake is absurd!
Unfortunately, there is a huge shortage of pharmacists. One person is doing the job of 2 or 3 and you’re not going to be perfect all the time in that environment. While that is of little consolation to the families of those who may have been hurt, there are reasons malpractice insurance exists for all medical professionals.
The only thing this story can do is stir up controversy. Pharmacy has been one of America’s most trusted professions for decades. We earned that ranking for a reason, but I doubt I’ll ever see a news story showing that side of the story.

I’m an aspiring pharmacy student that works at Walgreens on the side. Just so you know, there is an error-checking system in place along each part of the workflow thru the pharmacy.
I have to say I am appalled that Walgreens, nor the pharmacist, ever apologized to the family. I must work at a really good pharmacy because if we do make a mistake, we immediately apologize and try our best to satisfy the patient’s needs as quickly as possible.
However, these comments about making pharmacists “criminally” liable are ridiculous! If you’ve never worked a day behind the counter, then you have no right to presume to know how to do the job correctly. It’s very stressful and mistakes do happen. But I’ve seen pharmacists go out of their way to fix a mistake a MD made or even give free Albuterol solution for an asthma patient because they had no insurance or a doctor is unreachable to authorize a refill.

I will say again…. Everyone makes mistakes. Being a pharmacist for a large chain store is a very stressful job. To say a pharmacist or other healthcare professional is ignorant, IS ignorant… it’s not about a pharmacist’s education and knowledge about the actual drugs, but about the MANY other things going on requiring the pharmacist to multi-task during a normal work day. A pharmacist would love to share their vast knowledge about medications, disease states, interactions, and/or side effects, but they very rarely have the opportunity to voice any of this information due to handling insurance claims and unhappy customers, calling physicians, and checking filled prescriptions. And if they do use this knowledge and discover a mistake by a doctor, or counsel a patient on OTC meds, it is unrecognized.
Pharmacists deserve more credit for all that they do. It is never a good thing to make a mistake, but don’t demean and disrespect a profession that is very important in the healthcare field. And yes, every pharmacist should know that it is their duty to apologize for any mistakes made, regardless of how the mistake came about. No one is perfect, in any profession, in any field, in any type of situation.

As a pharmacy technician student who will be taking pre-pharmacy in the fall, I feel I need to respond to some of these comments. Kristin was completely correct in saying that a pharmacy, even a small one, is extremely busy. I have been finding that out first hand as I have been doing my first rotation of clinical experience for my program. There are times when our pharmacist is on the phone, we have like 10 people waiting on prescriptions, and the counter is full of prescriptions waiting on the pharmacist to check them. I know first hand how easy it is to misread the prescriptions that come in. Doctors are in a hurry and scrawl out their orders and its up to the techs to figure them out. Its easy to misread the label and grab the wrong drug. But pharmacists are not all “Idiots”. There are always a few bad apples, like this particular one who refuses to apologize for the damage he unwittingly did. But to toss out even more regulations and rules is just going to make pharmacists and pharmacy techs start to vanish like doctors are doing. Mistakes happen, pharmacists and pharmacy techs are human. Errors should be expected. Everyone should always check their own medication as soon as they come home from the pharmacy. If its something you take on a regular basis, you should know if something isnt right. It is ok to question your pharmacist and the techs too. They are trained to answer your questions. My sympathy goes out to the family of the little girl who was sickened.

Pharmacists must assume full responsibility of any mistakes made under their watch. And many unfortunate things have resulted from errors, but speaking as a certified technician for 5 years and a now a student earning a Pharm D, I believe patients should take a more active role in their healthcare.
Many of our customers refer to their meds as “the white one” or “my sugar pill.” They pick up their RX, in a rush, while talking on the cell phone, and refuse any counseling. And the drive thru! My pharmacy doesn’t have one, but those things seem to complicate every problem as well. How can a pharmacist adequately and confidentially counsel a patient through a scratchy speaker phone??? Please come inside, health care is not a fast-food service!
Patients need to be more responsible for their healthcare in general. Slow down. Know what you are taking and why. Know the color and shape of every pill, check the name on the bottle, and discuss the directions and side effects with the doctor as well as the pharmacist. Don’t be afraid to ask any questions, and call us when you get home if there are any problems. If something seems wrong, like taking 5 tablespoons of an anti-biotic then it probably is.
Bottom line, pharmacists should be held responsible all scripts that they verify and dispense, but they are human and obviously not perfect. By having patients double check their meds, we may not be able to reduce pharmacy error, but we can definitely prevent some of the deadly consequences.

Just reporting the mistakes is NOT addressing the REAL problem. The pharmacist are working too many hours with too few breaks. Anyone under those circumstances are most likely going to make mistakes. So how will reporting it fix the mistakes? It won’t! The mistakes are NOT happening because the pharmacist are not paying enough attention! They are happening because of no regulations on the working conditions of the pharmacist, and because business people do not want to pay for additional pharmacist to be on duty to help. Instead, they sacrifice the publics safety just to save them some money! That is where the REAL problem is! These BUSINESSES need to be required by law and regulations to have a sufficient amount of pharmacist working at any given time. If the BUSINESS violates that regulation, they should be criminally charged, PLUS fined such a HUGE amount, that it would deter ANY BUSINESS from trying to cut corners on cost and endangering the publics safety! I’m not a pharmacist, but I’ve seen the UNSAFE CONDITIONS they have to work under! I hope 20/20 points the finger to the REAL culprit: the BUSINESSES and their GREED to SAVE MONEY with a LACK of CONSIDERATION for SAFETY!

The investigation fails to point ou how many errors are CAUGHT by pharmacies every year. It is my experience that there are many more errors in physicians PRESCRIBING rather than pharmacists DISPENSING prescriptions.

I’ve just recently had the same issue with Walgreens typing the wrong dosage on the label for my 4 year old son. It was double the strength he should have gotten. I also had the same issue with Eckerds when my son was an infant. Eckerds had typed 1.5 teaspoons instead of 1.5 milliters. Walgreens did apologize, but Eckerds was defensive to admit their mistake saying it was the Dr’s handwriting that made it hard to decipher. My gosh they have a college degree and should know an infant can’t take a teaspoon full of medicine in the first place. Plus why didn’t they call the Dr to clarify what was written? I always have the Dr explain exactly what the prescription dosage and the medicine will look like ever since that first time with Eckerds issue. I see it the same as medical malpractice..so why are they able to get away with it if it affects a persons life but Dr’s or nurses would have a malpractice law suit on them?

I totally agree with Jessica. I may not be a tech but I have worked as one for 4 years and the first year I was in High School. Also Jessica is right on about the drive thru, it is very hard to assist people through it. And people do think its like McDonalds, i’m sorry but thats not what it is there for, it is for people who cant get out of their car, parents with kids, or just older people who have trouble walking. Its not for people who are just to lazy to get out of their cars, and the funny part is that they are the ones who are mad because we are not that fast. Another main issue is that people should always be aware of what they are taking and honestly we praise people who call and ask questions about why their pills look differnt. Also I may not work for Walgreens but I do work for a chain pharmacy and we also have people sign in order to pick up their scripts, I alway encourage people to ask questions. They might decline to be counseled but they always have the right to ask questions. I cant speak for walgreens and i dont know how they work but people have every right to ask questions and no signature can denied you to speak to a pharmacist at any time. I also think that 20/20 should invistigation on how people treat pharmacy techs and pharmacist. People are very disrespectful to us and 75% of it is’nt our faults.

This is so bazaar…I have three incidents recently with Wal Mart. My doctor had called in a medicine that I had never taken before. I went by to pick up my medication, they could not fill the complete precription which was fine. I usually check out my precription on the spot but did not that day. Next morning I read the script on the bottle. It had my name, I wasn’t sure if it was the right medication, It had the wrong doctor’s name on it.
Then I had the flu, my general practioner in town, call me in some medication, my spouse went to pick up and when I open it,, Guess what Wrong Doctor’s name.
Both incidents, I call pharmacists and the managers and the pharmacist said he has taken care of the problem and apologize. He told me to just call him if I ever have a problem. Sometimes when they try real hard to fill medication for difficult customer, they still make mistake.
I made no reply. I did not feel that I was being difficult.
I was just thinking of how many people that never check their medication they trust the staff behind the counter. It is so scary..What are we to do??????

ignorance is never a proper excuse. Hurting someone because there are 400 prescriptions to fill out is Still not an excuse. If people have to wait and be inconvienanced for it to be Correct than that is the proper price to pay and nothing more.

As a current pharmacy major/student intern, yes it is true that many technicians are high school students or people who only have a high school diploma. But really all they are supposed to do is count the pills for the pharmacist, run the cash register, and enter data, which is required to be double checked by the pharmacist. Like the guy said, Walgreens fills hundreds of millions of prescriptions every year so of course there will be some errors here and there, but that number is very small. And as far as signing away your rights, if a technician checks you out they are supposed to ask if you have questions for the pharmacist before they have you sign a log, and if you say no then youre saying you dont want counseling. I don’t think its that misleading, this is just poor reporting on a slow news week.

First of all being a technician is not a high schoolers job. It is walgreens fault for hiring someone with no expierence or certification in pharmacy. I am a certified and registered pharmacy technician and have been in pharmacy for 10 years!! It is not a field you want to have person after person coming in and out of. In the state of Texas you must be certified, by taking a 4 hour pharmacy exam, and registered with the state. In the pharmacy where I have been employed by for 8 years (not walgreens), when you sign the receipt when you pick up the prescription, you are signing that you picked it up. Anytime the customer, either does not want counseling or walks off without counseling, we put a RC for “refused counseling” just to note for our records that it was their choice not to receive counseling, but just because they sign the receipt does not mean they agree that they have had counseling. In Texas, we only have to give, “offer”, counseling on their original rx and once a year thereafter for that same medication. It would be best for our PROFESSION, yes it is a profession and not a high school job, if you were to state the facts more clearly and if you would also state the facts about the location and how patients are so demanding and want their prescription NOW and do not want to wait 20-30 minutes for us to to all of the checks we need to do to make sure we give them the correct directions and correct strenght. You may also want to state the fact that it does not take 5 seconds to fill a prescription and that maybe the patients should be more patient. When you put a story on line and on tv you need to make sure you cover all of your areas and you are confident of your story from all ends, because stories like these, put a bad wrap on all of us and I do my job very good and very careful, with or without breaks and lunches!!!!!! And I am NOT a high school student, this is my choice of a lifetime job!!!!!

I am a certified pharmacy technician in a major retail chain.
Regarding the signing of signature logs: the patients are NOT signing away any rights. They are simply acknowledging whether or not they have any questions for the pharmacist about the medication they’re picking up. This does not prevent them from changing their minds and asking a question later.
Re pharmacy personnel not being able to answer questions. If the question relates to the drugs, their effects, their interactions, etc., then only the pharmacist or a supervised pharmacy student is allowed to answer the question. It’s not because the other personnel are ignorant or insufficiently trained. It’s because they are not pharmacists!
Any error is, of course, one too many. But yes, they happen occasionally…and sincere apologies and efforts to correct and compensate should always be immediate. However, there is no one in any profession who can say he or she has never made a mistake. Because of the potentially tragic consequences, it is indeed imperative that safeguards be in place. There are already many, but systems are imperfect. And as already pointed out, the pressures of the business model rather than a health model are a major contributing factor. But where do those pressures ultimately come from? The customers! They want more, faster. Customers are often indignant if they’re told they have to wait more than 2 minutes for a prescription. How often we hear “it’s just a box, all you have to do is put a label on it!”
So yes, we can always strive to be better. However, I challenge all of you to also strive to be better consumers. Give your pharmacist plenty of time to fill non-urgent prescriptions. Don’t get irritated when we ask you questions. We really do want to serve you well and keep you safe and healthy!

As a CPhT in FL I have seen many mistakes made at the CVS locations where I worked. The problem is RpH’s that are from India and other countries brought over on Visas from these pharmacies. The requirements are different in these countries, and the English is passable at best for many of these pharmacists.I plan to go to Pharmacy school one day but it might be cheaper and quicker to get my degree from another country!

Businesses are out to make a profit but when it risks the safety and welfare of human life, we need to ask what do we do to correct it. The teenager’s mistake in Florida who caused a young woman of three children her life should be addressed. The family lives with the pain and loss of their loved one. The teenager lives with the fact he/she made a mistake that ultimately killed someone what is the psychological consequences there? Yes mistakes are made in any business but when profit is the first principal and ruling factor that operations are governed by, then the people who govern them should be the ones held accountable for their employee’s mistakes. If the president of Walgreen’s was accountable for what the technician’s and pharmacists did in every one of his/her/their stores; there wouldn’t be a problem and they would make sure of that especially if their neck was on the line.

I system is flawed seriously. You are blindly trusting another human who fills countless prescriptions every day and this goes on for years. I cannot blame him for a mistake but that one mistake can be so so serious . I have seen an altogether different system in India. All the drugs are delivered in their original (manufacturer) packing so the name (and composition) is clearly marked on the drug (very similar to over-the-counter drugs here). There is nothing over the counter in India and everything has to come from a pharmacist. This can avoid such situations where patient can very well read the name and the composition of the drug he/she received. I know there are other serious flaws in this system but if we focus on core problem, this might well be the answer.

I was appalled to learn this morning that the piece of paper we sign at the pharmacy is NOT merely an acknowledgement of having received our medication, but rather signing away our rights of remediation due to an error on the pharmacy’s part. This is, as far as I am concerned, a total deception!
I have made a habit, when I am AWARE that there are items in a document that I am told I MUST sign that I do not agree to or with, to actually cross out the items I do not agree to, or add additional comments of my own, prior to signing it. I can assure you that I will NOW make this a practice when signing my prescription receipt documents!

My daughter received a dose of asthma medication that was 10 TIMES what was ordered by the doctor at Walgreens. As a nurse i had to work the medication dose out to prove to the phamacist he was WRONG. It was a medication that can affect heart rate. What would have happened if i hadn’t known the math? It’s a disgrace. I check and double check everything every time now. These people should be accountable

I also meant to comment that I use Walgreen’s mail order, as well as I have had prescriptions filled at my local Wagreen’s. I have not had much difficulty with the mail order, but have had trouble of various kinds with the local store–much more than with other pharmacies. So, I see this as a VERY clear problem with WALGREEN pharmacies, and the question I would ask, is WHY?!

In responce to the Pharmacy mistakes. This is also one you need to read.
Walmart Green Valley Arizona, my husband takes Norvasc 10 mg. for high blood pressure daily, my dog a small Jack Russell terrier takes Phenobarbital 15 mg twice daily
for her epilepsy seisures.
In November I had both prescriptions refilled, the next morning my husband is going to take his prescriton. He notices that his pill is not the same size. We examine the pills, and there are 9 pills that were smaller. I get the dogs pill and her pill is larger than regular. We began examining the pill mix-up,what we found was frighting.
Both bottles were mixed up.
If my husband would of taken the Phenobarbital it would not affected him specifically,but could of suffered a stroke from not taken his blood pressure medicine. My dog Jackie could of had died from a seisure or died from the adult high blood pressure medicine.
I went to Walmart to alert these untrained assiatants and the Pharmacist. So sorry there reply, I have changed Pharamacy to Walgreens. Now what am I to do ? Who do we trust? I do now check each and every bottle for mistakes,I hope no one dies. Love your show.
Judy, Arizona

These are unfortunate events, and although I hold the pharmacists responsible for the errors, the error was not in the particular misfill. The error was for them to take a job that was going to require a 0% error rate and not enough support.
Retail pharmacists are expected to exert some professional responsibility, however, they do not have any access to important information to help thm make these decisions. Ask your Walgreens pharmacist how often he gets to see an INR (the value used to titrate warfarin doses) or a chemistry (to evaluate the patient’s ability to metabolize and eliminate drugs). I guarantee you that NEVER is the answer.
Walk a mile in their shoes and you’ll quickly understand that the problem is almost entirely a systems problem, from a lack of access to medical records to indecipherable prescriptions.

“I have been a pharmacist for 27 years and this is a problem that has been caused by society in general. Everyone is in a hurry. If pharmacists were allowed to take their time filling every rx this wouldnt happen. the comment made about technicians filling prescriptions is wrong. technicians don’t fill prescriptions, they input the rx and pull the meds for the rx and then the pharmacist checks everything to make sure it is correct before the patient gets the medication”
The above quote is wrong. I’ve been a pharmacist for roughly 12 years. The newer generation of pharmacists allow thier techs to fill and input prescriptions. It is true that the pharmacist checks thier work for accuracy and is responsible for making sure the prescription is filled correctly. However, by letting the techs do the busy work, it frees up time to allow the pharmacist to spend time on patient counseling.
Rich G.

I want to start by saying how sorry I am for the tragedy this family is having to endure. I have been a pharmacist now for 12 years and I will admit I have made mistakes, too many in my opinion and every time its happened I’ve taken it very hard. I ask myself what happened and how not to let it happen again. Pharmacists are the bridge between all other health professions. Doctor to patient nurse to patient insurance company to patient, etc. We provide both the medication as well as the information needed to properly take them. If we don’t know something we look it up. So do doctors. We can’t be expected to know or remember everything. No one does even in their chosen profession. One of the goals of pharmacies is to limit errors but it is impossible to eliminate them. Can you eliminate the numbers of fatal car crashes a year? Ofcourse not, and we let complete morons drive cars. To put the numbers in perspective, if I made 12 mistakes, none of them severe, over 12 years and I fill 1000 prescriptions per week I am 99.99807% accurate. That number means nothing because any one of those mistakes could be fatal ones. As long as companies are putting measures in place to limit errors and pharmacists care about the patients under their care we are doing a good job. Walgreens seems to have failed on both accounts in this case. My question is when are these news shows going to do a story about the errors caught by pharmacists or the lives they save? I prevented 3 last week from doctor’s offices one of which could have caused harm to the patient, when is my spot on 20/20 coming?

Angered Walgreens Employee and Disappointed GMA Fan
When I viewed your story on Walgreens and the pharmacy errors. I was outraged that a lot of your “facts” were incorrect. If you plan on doing a story about something could potentially hurt people’s lively hood please make sure that all of your “facts” are correct and not false. First of all not all technicians are dumb high school students as you implied. I am a pharmacy technician and I am 20 years old and have been doing this for almost 3 years. I graduated with honors and a 4.0 GPA!
I don’t appreciate you making us out to be ignorant children. Most of us have been working in the pharmacy longer than your pharmacist and have a great knowledge of everything including the medications in the pharmacy. I do feel compassion and remorse for the family that was hurt by an error in the pharmacy, but that does not give you the right to condemn everyone else, for someone’s error. I also am angered because you implied that we are out to get all of our patients by refusing consultation. I have NEVER asked anyone to sign away their right to consultation. We do not even have a log book for such a thing. We are required by law to ask if the patient has any questions when they are picking up their medications. AND WE DO! We are also human and not perfect. What about the millions that are killed or debilitated by doctors prescribing the wrong medication or screwing up a surgery?
And why focus just on Walgreens, there are millions of other pharmacies in the country! I don’t appreciate you not fully investigated the issue. I you had you would know that Walgreens does have a system in place for when there is an error you must report it. I am very disappointed in GMA and the ABC News network, I thought that you were into reporting the truth.

i have worked in a pharmacy for the past 5 years. i am just now making 7.00 an hour. i have a state license also, but had to get another job do to the pay. they need to set a pay grade for techs. you get what you pay for

From a business prospective, chain pharmacies are excellent. They provide customers PRODUCTS at competitive prices and employ thousands of workers. Despite what they add to the marketplace, they fall short in SERVICE.
I hold chain pharmacies responsible for the mistakes that are made at their stores. They have created working conditions that compromise patient care and have corrupted the pharmacy educational system. Let me explain…
Due to chain pharmacies expanding markets, pharmacist jobs are plentiful and the rewards are lucrative. It is obvious that chain pharmacies have push out most independent pharmacies where SERVICE is a priority, but what is less obvious is that they have lowered the bar on pharmacy education.

This story is very misleading. First of all not all pharmacy techs fill prescriptions as these reporters would lead you to believe. While a few states allow it, others don’t. This story was also wrong on the account that customers are being deceived regarding waiving counseling. My pharmacy requires me to check whether or not I want counseling along with my signature. If I check yes, I get counseling. If I check no, no counseling. No deception there!

I find it amusing that the media feels the need to point out the failings of the pharmacists of the world while seldom is it mentioned that the public’s need for “medicine now” has led to the multi-window drive-through provides a significantly greater barrier to patient care than the lack of pharmacist compassion, caring, or knowledge. I don’t know if the rest of my colleagues have had such experiences, but I found it extremely difficult to explain the intricacies of several new medications through a microphone to a drive-through patient that I couldn’t even really see who was also talking on a cell phone while trying to control the behavior of 3 kids in the backseat and couldn’t come into the store because they “didn’t have time”. And if I had a nickel for every time I heard “How long does it take to count 30 pills?” I could retire early.
I wish I had the numbers to prove it, but I would venture to guess that the “fast food” mentality that patients have grown not only to embrace, but also to expect, has contributed to increased risk through misunderstandings and errors. When dispensing to a patient that simply didn’t have time to listen to what I had to say I would always point out the provided patient information and asked them to call to discuss the information when they had more time. Of the thousands of offers given, I would say less than 10-20 actually took the time to call back to discuss their medications.
My opinion in no way sanctions the behavior of pharmacists that make little attempt to follow the law or take responsibility for their actions, but at some point the health of an individual needs to become the responsibility of that individual and recognizing where the greatest risk truly exists is part of that responsibility. The process taking one from diagnosis to successful treatment can be long and is fraught with opportunities for error on the part of the physician, nurse, and pharmacist, as well as patients. And as your story points out, mistakes can be absolutely devastating.

As a pharmacist with experience in both large retail operations and smaller mom and pop drugstores, I am dismayed that 20/20 and Good Morning America would only site one side of this story. Yes, mistakes do happen, but did the article present to the public, the conditions on which pharmacists must work? And to degrade the value of our technicians is totally inappropriate. First and foremost, a pharmacy cannot operate without the assistance of technicians. Imagine if a pharmacist had to answer phones, count the medicine, type in the prescrition, counsel the patient, look for any drug-drug interactions, talk to doctors, ring on the register, stock the shelves, and double check the prescriptions to get the medicine to the patient in under 15 minutes. Now, I ask you, how many mistakes would be made?? Therefore, technicians are a valuable asset to the whole pharmacy practice.
Most retail establishments are now mandating that technicians be certified which will add to the patient’s safety. Everyday in pharmacy, we are fighting to uphold the safety of the patient. Unfortunately, in some instances, mistakes do happen. We have to ask ourselves, what could have been done to prevent this and what could be done in the future to alleviate these mistakes. A pharmacist is ultimately responsible for what leaves the pharmacy, therefore we need to be more diligent in our checking methods.
Also, the working conditions of these large chains needs to be revised. A pharmacist should not have to work 14 hour days without any lunch breaks or personal breaks. Has anyone ever heard of this with big businesses? A pharmacist is supposed to go throughout the day without these breaks and be liable for the patient’s safety. What is worng with this picture? 20/20 and GMA should point this out to the viewers/consumers. We are not out to hurt anyone. Pharmacy is one of America’s most trusted professions. I challenge anyone of you who are involved with this story to work behind the counter in a retail pharmacy establishment and I will assure you that you will have a different perception of what goes on behind the counter, not to mention a new respect for the pharmacist and the profession itself.

How can we be expected to provide professional health care when our profession has been reduced to the equivalent of a fast food joint with a drive-through and an intercom? And our bosses are more worried about making sure we ask every customer for their store rewards card and answering the phone in 14.5 seconds than they are about script accuracy?
Patients need to be proactive in their own health care. Ask us questions. CALL US if your pills look different, don’t just take them all month and ask about it when you return for a refill. Learn what they are for…if you call for a refill, but don’t know the name of the drug or what you take it for, then how you can possibly know when something is wrong? For God’s sake, learn why you take this medication!!! Your doctor prescribed it for a reason and it’s highly unlikely he/she is leaving you in the dark about your disease state. Nothing detailed…I would be happy with “it’s for my blood pressure” or “it’s for my cramps.” Don’t act surprised when you are out of refills…the bottle tells you how many you have left. If you read it each time you picked up your meds, you would know this.
And lastly, get off your cell phone when you approach the pharmacy counter. You wouldn’t talk on the phone while the nurse was taking your blood pressure or the MD was doing a Pap, so why talk on it when I am asking about allergies, etc. It’s disrespectful and, more importantly, interferes with your ability to give me accurate info. Maybe my error began with you…errors are a two-way street.

I went to school for Medical Billing but had friend’s who were taking the Pharmacy Technician courses that lasted over 11 months at my school, Bryman which is a part of Corinthian Colleges. To graduate you were required to go on an extern site but Walgreen’s refused to allow trained pharmacy technician’s to work for them. So to me this seems absolutely insane when all across the entire USA we have people who actually have the training and the knowledge that are being passed by when a bunch of cheaper labor high school student’s are being given a job that they have absolutely no training for. The reason Walgreen’s stated was they didn’t want to insure the externs and didn’t want to have to give them further training. I think this is absolutely absurd and I hope they look into why Walgreen’s is doing this.

Sometimes it isn’t the Pharmacist make the errors. The technicians who feel they can answer a question the Pharmacist should answer is also a large problem The Pharmacist is too busy to be bothered with an interaction question so the technicians reads a couple of lines on the pamphlet. You get home take the OTC with your prescriptions only to be rushed to the Emergency Room with a severe interaction.
The corporate companies need to realize that sometimes the bottom line cost lives. I think the corporation should apologize for the overworked, often alone Pharmacist who is dealing with 20 customers and phones, etc.

Walgreens just like all the other greedy chains wants to spend less on running/manning the stores and continues to increase R. Ph. responsibilities – obviously this is going to lead to issues and errors caused by the pharmacists and will eventually hurt the patients.
Pharmacy Managers routinely force their staff to fill prescriptions even when the R. Ph or the Tech. is not comfortable due to some errors or issues with the Rx. so they can make the customers happy.
Lately, there have been a series of armed robberies in stores at night where more likely the 24 hr stores at Walgreens and CVS are managed by 2 women (Front/Store Manager) and R. Ph, added to the risks of addicted patients coming to the Pharmacy in order to fill fake Rxs they acquired from the emergency rooms at night.
Profits hungry drug chains are comfortable paying damages to a few patients rather than change their practices to make things safer for patients and staff. If a Overnight R. Ph. is expected to fill close to 80 – 100 Rxs, attent to patients (often drug addicts), take care of inventory and do all the other house keeping chores of the Pharmacy – one should expect that they will make mistakes and some poor patient will end up paying dearly for their errors.
FDA and State Boards do have rules related to how many hours can someone work at the counter etc. but do not define what the roles and responsibilities should be and/or define the amount of work-load that should be considred safe for a R. Ph.
Greed will and does cause risks for patients, unfortunately there is no way out because everyone is greedy – R. Ph, Pharmacy chains and Staff.

It’s sickening how illness has become an industry in this country and big business is responsible for this. The bottom line is money, not care of the customer and their expectations of their staff are insane. NOBODY in the medical field, including doctors and nurses, should ever work more than an 8 hour shift. But NOTHING will change until Congress, as usual, steps in and makes mandates for the medical field that they refuse to set for themselves. Medical professionals have become as self-protective and self-serving as the big businesses they are in bed with. Shame on them because people are dying or suffering disabilities due to their refusal to admit changes need to be made. AND THESE ARE OUR HEALERS??? Thank God I go to the VA, where the pharmacists can take their time.

I work at a pharmacy and have to agree with some of the other pharmacy people who have commented that most people have no idea what its like working behind the counter. It is a very high stress job where most of the time we had been understaffed to accomadate the amount of customers we had. Most of us are fully trained but the only way to become fully trained is to work because there are many things you can’t write in a manual and teach someone, they have to learn by experience, some people it takes more than a year for them to learn everything. Also most people don’t know all of the laws we have to abide by in filling scripts, procedures, and customer relations. Techs can not answer customer questions b/c we have not been to school for it so you must ask the pharmacist about medical questions b/c LEGALLY we just can’t do their job for them. Ultimately if a mistake is let out it is the pharmacists job to catch it, but after working a 12 hour day, someon’es name is liable to be spelled wrong or we may have the wrong phone number but at the pharmacy I work at we have never made a severe mistake and I have been there for a year!

If an RN gives the patient the wrong med they could lose their license or be sued for mal-preactice. They also work 12 hour shifts often with no lunch or bathroom breaks. I worked on a cardiac unit that was fast paced to the point of crazy, but I don’t remember one med error the entire time I worked there. There were safety measures in place. It can be done.

I am currently watching 20/20′s report. I am currently in pharmacy school and have worked at a pharmacy since I was about 16 years old. It would be impossible for the pharmacist to take doctor calls, counsel patients AND fill medications/enter them into the computer at the same time. I have gained much experience by working in a pharmacy, and I do not feel it’s something that should be restricted. It is the pharmacist’s duty to check the original prescription to verify that the info is correct on the label, and also that the medicine is correct- no prescription can or should ever be given without the approval of a pharmacist, it’s the pharmacist’s job to check and double check everything to eliminate errors.

I am a pharmacy student that will graduate in 1 month. I have worked in a community pharmacy for the past couple years and when a mistake was made (which were very few and did not result in harm to our knowledge) we did apologize, and we did what was needed in order to make the situation right. We did this because we care about people, plain and simple.
I am sorry to hear about this patient and the family. I will never understand what they must go through daily. There should have been an apology along with the settlement. The only thing I ask others to consider is in most jobs (not all) errors are made daily that do not affect the health of others. In almost every other field an error can occur without any consequence or it can be fixed with a little work. In the medical field this does not occur. One mistake can have severe consequences. We are all human, we all make mistakes. I am very sorry for this family, and just hope we as pharmacists can continue to better our profession in order to serve our patients in the best possible way.

I do not place the blame on the individual pharmacist. I do however blame the huge chains that lie to us about what we are signing when we pick up our prescriptions and for not having enough TRAINED employees to ensure the quality and accuracy of our prescriptions. An unfortunate oversight on 20/20′s part is to spotlight the largest and most accurate pharmacy system in the nation, the VA pharmacy system with an astounding accuracy rate of over 99%!

I am glad that 20/20 did this story. Unfortunately, many people feel that the story attacked pharmacists. I understood it to represent the impossible demands that the chain pharmacies put on the pharmacists and techinicians. I will admit that I go to a local pharmacy now, because Walgreens gave me or my husband either the wrong prescription or another person’s prescription by mistake on four separate occasions. I don’t blame the people working there as much as I do Walgreens. The people working in the pharmacy have too many demands without enough help. I hope that this will cause the chain pharmacies to realize that they are losing business because of this. For me, convenience is not worth mine or my families health or life.

What Brian Ross said on GMA is NOT true. The signature does NOT ONLY necessarily waive their right to counseling. It IS also for insurance auditing and FRAUD purposes and IT IS to show that the prescription was PICKED UP. I own my own independent pharmacy and every patient signs regardless of payment method or party. This story is INDEED very biased to attack pharmaciesm pharmacists, and pharmacy technicians.
ABC, I AM APPALLED at your presentation of this situation – you should be ashamed of yourselves!

To be honest I am a Pharmacy Tech for WALGREEENS. And yes I have a high school degree. In fact I am working on my college degree. This report only blames one side of the problem. I believe that the patients there, that are requesting their prescriptions done ASAP is also a part of the problem. If the patient was not that impatient at getting their prescription than less mistakes would be made in that there would be less pressure to get it done ASAP. Patients should pay a part of the responsibility when mistakes do happen. It is not as if the pharmacy staff is standing there doing nothing and decides to pull the wrong medicine off of the shelf so that it could be something fun for them.

I have worked in Pharmacy for almost 11 years now and just graduated pharmacy school last year. I feel that this program was skewed. We in pharmacy have to deal with working extended hours without breaks for lunch of other personal reasons.
The fast-food mentality is the biggest problem. Most patients seem to get upset if the script they have helpd onto for 3 months is not filled in the 3 or 4 minutes because all the pharmacist has to do is just “slap a label” on the box..,this is a big misconception, but trying to get a patient to understand this very difficult.
Fl pharmacists are working on trying to be able to offer patients immunizations, yes this is true, but before we can even do this we have to under go a training/certification course that teaches us how to give the immunizations, what to do in case a patient has an allergic reaction, and in order to get the certification training up to date, we have to have a current up to date CPR license.
And also, we don’t spend 4 years in pharmacy school just to count pills.
The sad thing about all of this is that a great majority of people I graduated with did not want to go into retail because they found out first hand how rotten the public can be. Instead, these pharmacists are doing residences in order to become clinical pharmacists who actually can work with patients and doctors.

I have been a Walgreens pharmacist for 20 plus years. Patient safety/care is my primary goal and responsibility.
BOTTOM LINE TO PREVENT ERRORS!!!
1)MANDATED lunch breaks to increase concentration and accuracy.
2)MANDATE an increase in Pharmacist to technician ratio.
3)MANDATE maximum number of prescriptions per pharmacist per hour filled. RPh/hr/filled.
I ask, how will the above changes occur? I believe Unions are the answer. Who else can stand up to corporate america? Otherwise, errors will continue. Sadly, some tragic.

Unfortunately pharmacists are human…so they make mistakes. So are doctors, however, and every other professional on this planet. I only wish they would have presented both sides of the story. I catch roughly 1 mistake a shift that a doctor or nurse has made. In the past week I prevented a woman from getting a potentially lethal comination of medications from 2 different doctors. The 2 doctors had no idea the other was prescribing and thanked me. The patient, however? She was just mad and proceeded to yell at me for 10 minutes because I inconvenienced her. A few months ago I caught a 10 times overdose that a doctor was trying to prescribe for an infant. Sometimes an overdose like this would actually not be that bad…except this was for iron. Iron is toxic to children at very low amounts. The doctor actually argued with me for awhile before allowing me to change the prescription. No “thank you”, nothing. I don’t expect kudos for everything, knowing my meds is my job, but I do expect people to know both sides of stories before making judgements. Thanks.

The report tonight on 20/20 was not all true. Here in Arizona a 16 year old in NOT allowed to fill prescriptions. Our State Board of Pharmacy requires them to be at least 18 years old, have a High School diploma or GED, and they MUST be licensed with the AZ State Board of Pharmacy. If an employee is not, they don’t even step foot into the filling area. Also, my company requires pharmacy technician training programs, and all technicians must pass the National Pharmacy Technician Certification Board Exam within 2 years. 20/20 should not make generalizations that are not true!

People would never understand what goes on behind the counter if they’ve never worked behind the counter. We(pharmacists) really try our best to catch the mistakes that have to be caught and we really mean to do NO HARM! I started working in a pharmacy when I was 18, and I think the earlier you start, the more experience you get when you become a pharmacist. The pharmacist should have caught the mistake of the 16 year old, but pharmacists really aren’t perfect, they do make mistakes. I’m sorry for our mistakes but I’m sure most of us try. We really shouldn’t look at hiring a 16 year old as a bad thing, they will eventually become 18 then 20 but with more knowledge. Technicians type, count and label medications. It has to go through a final check by the pharmacist before it gets to the patient. Also another thing I want to point out is that, patients’ attitudes have to change too. Part of the reason that there are more younger people being hired is because the older people can’t take it anymore. We really get abused mentally by patients, doctors and their office staff. For example, just a few days ago, I had this old man come in and 15 of his automatically filled prescriptions weren’t ready. He came in earlier than the computer recognized, so I try my best to prioritize his prescriptions before anybody else’s because he was an old man. After I completed his prescriptions, I didn’t get any thank you but, “NEXT TIME IT BETTER BE READY!!!..You a**!!”, Why are people so hostile? Is being sick the best excuse? With all this stress, we still try! We certainly aren’t overpaid, and we also aren’t crooks as George Bush puts it. Seems like these mistakes aired by the media magnifies us as bad guys, but come on let’s really be fair!!

As a Walgreens employee I feel that it was oldly strange that Walmart was left out of this entire report. We were almost solely picked out of all retail pharmacies for making mistakes. Of the millions and millions of scripts we have filled in the past years these two horrible and true stories are all that they have on Walgreens. Everyone that works for Walgreens truly feels bad for the families of these stories, but why only point out Walgreens, I’m certain there were other mistakes made by other pharmacies that just did not happen to make the air. Which gets me back to my original point which was “Where was Walmart in this story?” They probably paid a little to much to be seen on television.

“Mistakes” and “error” are words that no one in life would like to hear or deal with, especially in healthcare system when lives are involved. No one can go through life not making errors. But there are many factors that should be placed in consideration when pointing fingers at the one being at fault. In a”perfect” world healthcare system and professions should not make mistakes however we all know that never exist, after all we’re human. Many people complained and expressed themselves when things don’t happen or favor their side. People always complain about not getting their prescriptions on time, there’s always a long wait, always treat the pharmacy as if it’s a fastfood service, and sometime abuse the drive-through system. Many complaints have been made about pharmacists are in a hurry preparing prescriptions and are not careful perfomring there job, but have they ever thought of the fact that expecting pharmacists to get prescriptions done fast and at the same time trying to be accurate with prescription verification doesn’t always have good outcome. Pharmacists along with other healthcare professions have provide many good care and excellent work however hardly any of those achievement have ever been commented or broadcast. However; when a mistake is made we hear everything from A-Z. I’m certain that Walgreens has spent billions of dollars in the industry promoting good service and accuracy and to provide the best customer service as possible to satisfy the customers. I’m sure many other retail pharmacy are doing the same and that mistakes also take place in other chain. I don’t think there is any justice in performing investigation on just one company and trash talk as if mistakes never existed in other settings. For those that expect “error-free” service in the pharmacy, please keep in mind that the next time you have a prescription fill at your local pharmacy that 1) DO NOT BE IRRATIONAL ABOUT YOUR EXPECTATIONS 2) DON’T RUSH TO GET YOUR PRESCRIPTION DONE FAST 3) DON’T BE UPSET WHEN YOU SHOWED UP AT THE COUNTER AND YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS ARE NOT DONE ON TIME 4)DON’T TAKE IT OUT ON THE PHARMACY STAFF WHEN YOUR INSURANCE DON’T PAY FOR YOU PRESCRIPTION OR YOUR DOCTOR DIDN’T AUTHORIZED OR CALL IN A SCRIPT 5)DON’T ABUSE THE PHARMACY DRIVE THROUGH AS IF YOU’RE AT A FASTFOOD SERVICE GETTING YOUR BURGERS. Maybe an elimination of 5 things listed above, pharmacists and pharmacy personnel can have a less hostile environment and perhaps “errors” can be eliminated. I guess we all just got to stop being a bunch of “whiners” when we didn’t get what we wanted.

As a 3rd year pharmacy student, I have been upset by the negativity portrayed by the media of pharmacists, and most of the patients I have dealt with during my rotations and internships. During my 4 years of undergrad and current 3rd year in my doctorate, I have learned the hard way that the majority of patients are cruel, ignorant, selfish, ungrateful. When I was young and stupid, I thought that I could contribute to the greater good of society by being immune to such behavior/treatment and focus on my duties as a health care provider. But over the years, such people have slowly chipped my personality and enthusiasm away, and I have changed. I’ve made a decision to ditch my empathy towards patients. My anger has turned to hate, my hate turned to fear, fear turns..to the dark side. I’m going to the pharmaceutical industry where I’ll make tons of money screwing people with over-priced drugs. Being nice in this world makes you vulnerable. Why would I want to sacrifice my well being (overworked/underpaid) with ignorant people constantly yelling/distracting me at a retail pharmacy (unaware and/or indifferent of my efforts to provide patient care) which is a major contributing factor to making lethal errors when I can design drugs that can be advertised on TV (easily convince stupid people to believe they need it) and be sold at a ridiculous amount of money? The choice is getting easier every semester towards graduation. Thanks ABC, you’ve helped me take the easy road out.

I am a third year pharmacy student and a pharmacy intern. I have to tell you all that we are taught all about medications in school and must master it before we are ever allowed to take care of patients. 4+ years are dedicated to learning about all drugs and their potential interactions. It is a much harder job than most people recognize and appreciate. We are not ignorant and many of the times are filling and dispensing prescriptions with customers saying hurtful and disrespectful things and giving us the “evil eye” while we try to help them.
Their is no excuse for the harm that has been caused to the families shown on 20/20 or any family, but I must say that the majority of pharmacists and technicians are doing their utmost to serve, protect, and help their customers the best way they know how.
Their are thousands of drugs today and it takes time for pharmacists to monitor for interactions, but the fact of the matter is many patients don’t want to wait for that information.

Either retail or institutional pharamcies, The errors occurs on both retail and instituions. Once the problem has “come” out, it is the managers job (from inputs from the staff pharmacists) to redraw the workflow diagram do make sure what areas might be moe prone to “accidents” and fix the work flow. The flault lies with the work flor not on an individual. We also are humans. Unfortunately, The Pharmacists are humans – makes mistakes – that is why both retail and institutional pharmacies have implemented doulbe or even touble check system in place before the medications leaves the pharmary double and triple verfied. Also implementing bar codes and more automated system in the pharmacies will lessen the workload for the pharmacists and spend more time counseling them – most of the drug errors can be caught during couceling process. I did not like the 20/20 finger pointing at one prefession – retail – because retail pharmcies are stock price driven, therefore, they want more out of their employees because the refund rate is going down from the govenmemt amd tje stat amd federal level. no one person should be blamed for the error since they are so many other factors are involved. bottom line for any pharmacies you work at, the bottom line is – money – so to make the stock shares happy.

The problems that happen in a pharmacy are serious and need to be taken seriously – by ALL parties involved. I’m a doctor of pharmacy and care very much about my patients. I work in retail pharmacy.
Problems are not because the company I work for “pushes” me to churn out prescriptions. The only people “pushing” me to churn out prescriptions are patients.
My company lets me take breaks and eat and go to the bathroom! But, when I sit down to eat a bite, there is a customer at the counter YELLING at me to get my lazy ass up and fill her prescription. When I leave to go to the bathroom, I get stopped by customers in the aisles to ask what they can use to cleanse their colon. Then I get back to customers angry that I was gone for so long.

Oh my God! I just changed pharmacies two weeks ago, leaving Walgreen’s after two separate errors in three days. I switched to a local chain; so far so good. By the way, I am an extremely patient and grateful woman, middle-aged, with several disabilities which hinder my getting to the store, so each time this inconvenienced several other people, too. And, no tee times or hair appointments with me. I swore a mighty oath never to set foot in Walgreen’s again, for any reason.

Typical drive by 20/20 hit piece. I hope Walggreens sues you for slander. When was the last time you had a serious journalist on staff? No one intentionally makes mistakes that harms their customers. Wait, I forgot the diservice that ABC does every time it goes on air.

Pharmacy is exact profession. Mistakes are not tolerated .
Pharmacist and Pharmacist tech are humans and mistakes
are made. We have double and triple checks and
the latest technology to prevent errors.
We don’t try to hide our mistakes. At the pharmacy where
I work when an error is found ,we call the patient
The doctor and file an error form to keep on file.
Pharmacist are devastated when this happens.
Pharmacist and their staff are under tremendous pressure.
Patients want faster service. The chains want less payroll
and cut tech hours and work pharmacist 12 hour shifts.
We fight with insurance companies on behave of the patient.
We have pressures from patient who are abusing drugs
To refill early medication.
I feel that ABC didn’t tell the whole story. Pharmacist
Across America stop mistakes daily in their practice.
They call doctors about prescription that can’t read due to poor
Handwriting, overdoses and Interactions and allergies.
Everyday errors are prevented by pharmacist and their staff.
That needs to be included in any future programs.
At our chain , the customer signs to pick
Up an rx. He signs off on Hippa, safety caps
Prove that he received a rx. And if he wants
Consulting or not. It was started that pharmacies
Were deceiving the patient when they sign.
America should be told about how pharmacist prevent errors.
We are the last health care link between the Doctor and
The patient when it involves medications.
America should be what the pharmacy profession does
To make sure we don’t have filling errors.

I just wanted to say that there are many reasons that pharmacists make mistakes, most importantly because they are human. Not only do they have a lot of responsibilities that occur simultaneously (answering phones, counseling, typing, checking , filling) but to add to this stress we have the harrassing patient. Yes, that is what they are called: annoying, badgering, yelling, complaining, “my copay has sky-rocketed, why isn’t my rx ready, why aren’t there any refills,why can’t you just give me a few for the holiday weekend?” Along with this some patients insist on speaking to the pharmacist for entirely meaningless things, such as a refill or the location of the eggs. This is not necessary. You can blame a lot of people on pharmacy errors, (corporate america, patients, 12 hour shifts, and a stressful environment) but most important is the misconception that pharamcists don’t feel any guilt when a misfill occurs. We did not go to school for years to be trained to harm people. We are “health care professionals”.
Furthermore, I do think that 20/20 should do a 1 hour segment on the life of a retail pharmacist in a busy store such as a 24 hour CVS. That would be a wake up call for everyone.
Emily RPH

Yes Pharmacists make mistakes, as does every other profession out there. Yes our deals with peoples lives, and that has to be taken seriously. But what about all of the good that pharmacists do. Does anyone know of the pharmacist that runs the Coumadin clinic? The one that counsels the patient for 15-30 minutes weekly about their medication, about interactions, about their lab values? The one that recognizes a patient is having increased chest pain, and increased blood pressue, the one that suggests a cardiologist follow up. How about the hospital pharmacist that is constantly questioning the doses prescribed by medical residents who are still learning? Or the clinical pharmacist that goes on rounds with the doctors. The one that instantly makes suggestions about the correct antibiotic, or insulin dosing for a patient.
Yes, what happened is horrible. But Pharmacists are doing the best that we can. We have to take continuing education credits each year, we have to know about every single drug out there…. any idea how many medications there are? We go to school for at least 6 years, yet are under-appreciated by much of the world. We know more about medications, how they work, and interactions than anyone else. I think the good we do as a profession should also be highlighted.

First of all, let me say that the cases of such drastic errors which were highlighted in the piece are terrible and I ache for those families. However, one aspect of the story that was not addressed is the unbelievable pressure put on pharmacists from the public.
The majority of medical errors, including those made in dispensing, are the by-product of a demanding sense of medical entitlement by the general public. I would urge 20/20 to conduct a study on the behavior of patients at the pharmacy counter.
As a student, I believed all of the teaching about empathy, counseling and pharmaceutical care. However, one thing that was never mentioned in class was the fact that patients at their core don’t want any of that. They want their medicine fifteen minutes earlier than they came into the store, they want the prescription run through on whatever random insurance carrier that they have, they do not want to pay their co-pay and they want to take whatever chance they can get to yell at the pharmacy staff for doing their job…often using profanity. Not only that, but if you dare refuse any of their demands, they could be waiting on you in the parking lot when you leave the pharmacy at 10:00 p.m. So, we get used to being in a hurry…after all, who wants to be yelled at constantly for a 12 hour shift? Errors are going to happen.
I would urge all pharmacy chains to adopt a 24 hour wait policy, unless the prescription is for an acute or emergent situation. AND…just because the patient waited until he or she was out of the medication to make the effort to get the prescription filled does not constitute an emergent situation.

I am a pharmacy tech in a chain store…first off…I want to stress that the sheet that is signed in our pharmacy, is not for waiving your right to counsel..it is for verification of the HIPPA policy and for your insurance. If audited they want to know if you actually picked up a script that was “filled” at our store! How absurd to have them sign to waive counseling.
I work in the state of Wisconsin, were the pharmacist is required by law to counsel on every script whether new or a refill. You can’t imagine how irritated the customer gets when they have wait for the pharmacist to come over and ask if they have any questions. Sometimes it takes a pharmacist a bit to address them, because they are counseling another patient, calling the doctor for a clarification on a script they wrote, dealing with insurance issues and phone calls from patients who have left/possibly coming in or questions on medicines filled at another pharmacy!
Work in a pharmacy for a few days..it’s very eye opening. But Walgreens should maybe hire more pharmacists and have them work less hours..especially if you think they should be filling 400 scripts in a shift!

The state of Oregon requires that pharmacists report not only misfilled medications at patient level, but also adverse reactions reported by the patient. What we as pharmacists are not required to report is how many prescriptions we recieve from the doctors that are wrong medications, wrong dosages and wrong strengths! I believe that the average prescription sent in wrong by the md and caught at the pharmacist level is higher, than misfilled medications at the patien level. Pharmacists are humans and human error will be a factor in every area of healthcare, weather it be a pharmacist, nurse, or a medical doctor.

I have to first thank Good Morning America and 20/20 for the media broadcasts they have recently aired regarding medication errors.
I am a pharmacist for a major retail drug chain, and am hopeful that this will help to educate the public of the importance of a pharmacist’s role in their overall health care. In my profession, one simple error can destroy quality of life or kill a person. It would stand to reason, then, that pharmacists should be allotted the necessary time to do their job properly.
Simply blaming either the pharmacist who made a medication error or the pharmacy where the medication error occurred is an insufficient resolution to the problem. Discussing ways to ensure these mistakes are never made again would serve as a more productive resolution to this issue.

My heart goes out to the family affected.
Well, like some ppl stated, there are always 2 sides to a story. Everyone has a role to play here starting from the federal government. Pharmacist shortages exist and the government needs to make laws that would help with this problem. I graduated in May 2006 and was thrown into a very busy store to fill almost 300 prescriptions all by myself on a 14-hour shift with only a 30 minutes break. And yes, during the break you are often filling prescriptions just to get caught up with things so you don’t get yelled out when a customer comes back and his/her meds are not ready.
The govt needs to put restrictions on the number of scripts and hours a pharmacist works in a day with mandated breaks.
I’ve had customers come in during breaks (even though there’s a sign that states clearly that they can’t pick up during breaks), yelling and swearing at the poor technicians just because the pharmacist gets a 30 minutes ‘break’.Come on ppl, lets get real here.
ABC needs to go undercover on a monday in a busy pharmacy and see how things actually go down when u have mean customers and phones ringing off the hook and all and not this one sided story they aired.

People do not understand what it is like to be a pharmacist. Medical doctors take only one class on drugs in medical school, and very often prescribe medication to their patients that is dangerous or even deadly in combinations. Pharmacists must catch all of these errors, while trying to explain to impatient customers that they will have to wait ten minutes (God forbid!), getting screamed at by people who haven’t kept their own insurance up to date, etc. People treat pharmacists (who save their lives more often than they can imagine) like fast food workers– they want their product, NOW, and for a two-dollar co-pay.
Of course pharmacists know the medication and the material inside and out. My husband has a doctorate in pharmacy. He is very competent. Everyone makes errors–it is more tragic when errors occur in the medical field, but they occur all the time, everywhere. My husband was misdiagnosed in the ER and nearly died before having emergency surgery. It happens all the time. Pharmacists are not fired for making mistakes, and I cannot believe some posters saying that they should be held criminally liable for typos. In order to be criminally liable for ANYTHING, the mistake must have occurred while the pharmacist was drunk or otherwise impaired and/or reckless while at work. You cannot eliminate human error unless you eliminate humans!

I’m appalled at the story you did on rx mistakes. I have been a pharmacy tech for almost 6 years now. We have higth school students who are techs and they do an excellent job. I think this story gave people the wrong idea about pharmacies. As far as the signatures go, they are not signing away their right to couseling. Where I work we ask the patient if they have any questions for the pharmacist and if they don’t they sign at one place and if they do they sign at another. We usually do anywhere from 400 to 500 rx’s a day and we only have 1 pharmacist on at a time. That is a lost of work for one person to do at one time. A pharmacist is expected to counsel patients, verify rx, answer Dr calls and much more. People just need to be patient with the pharmacist and the techs. We take our jobs seriuosly and don’t rush just to get things done. I think next time ABC/20/20 decides to do a story like this they should get their facts straight.

I’m VERY angry that ONLY Walgreens was targeted in the 20/20 story last night!!! My pharmacist is the best! With my former job my work hours were horrible, so it was great (and IS great)to have a pharmacy that’s open 24/7! Other pharmacies don’t do that, and it makes for a great inconvenience. They still have a loyal patron in me!!! What about Wal-Mart, CVS, Target, and Rite Aid? Do your reporting FAIRLY, 20/20!!!!

I have been using Walgreens for years and have had no problems. The pharmacists have always been there for me to answer my questions, to provide education, and to catch interactions even my physician had missed. I trust my pharmacist and pharmacy. They are wonderful.
However, Walgreens pharmacists work in a setting that places them at risk for making mistakes. People treat them like the front end of the store, interrupting pharmacists as they work to ask “where are the sandwich bags”, ringing up a cartful of items when they ought to be focusing on prescriptions, being yelled at for insurance problems beyond their control, opening doors to let people use the bathroom, etc.
To the folks who sit at Walgreens corporate….wake up!! Stop treating the pharmacy like the rest of your store. Give them extra help. Make people go up to the front of the store to ring their other items. Do whatever you can so that the pharmacy can focus on their work without the interruptions and fill my prescription safely.

I have been a pharmacy tech for three years, and started when I was a senior in high school. The majority of high school students that are hired (by the company that I work for) plan on going to pharmacy school to become pharmacists. Most pharmacy schools require (or strongly recommend) pharmacy experience before being accepted into their program. There certainly is no point in educating individuals so that they may become pharmacists, if they will hate their job and leave shortly after entering the field. That certainly will not help the pharmacist shortage.
Unfortunately, after being a tech for only three years, I no longer want to become a pharmacist, and am finishing up my bachelors in a related (but distant!!) field. I have no desire to babysit the general public. Americans need to take more responsibility for their own health care. As a tech, I should not have to regularly try to explain to a patient that if the doctor said to take one tablet every morning, and you decide to take it 3 times a day instead, that it still can not be refilled early. Likewise, prescription bottles clearly state how long the prescription is good for and how many more refills are available. It is amazing how many people are baffled that when their doctor writes a prescription, it is not good for forever. I once had a lady request a refill on a medication that had been expired for over 6 years.

beware If your going to E-mail others of there comments keep the words out and you know what the words are everyone has there own right to say what they feel about the pharmacy error and I mean you!!

In this day of computers it is stupid that Dr’s still use short hand in Rx instead of humanly readable text and a PICTURE of the med/pill.

(The phone rings)
You have left to do something very important, such as browse through the monster truck magazines, and do not hear the three PA announcements requesting that you return to the pharmacy. You return eventually, expecting to pick up the finished; prescription…..
(The phone rings)
…….only to find out that I need to ask your address, phone
number, date of birth, if you have any allergies and insurance
coverage. You tell me you’re allergic to codeine. Since the prescription is for Vicodin I ask you what exactly codeine did to you when you took it. You say it made your stomach hurt… I roll
my eyes and write down “no known allergies.” You tell me……

When I tell you this, you say you got hydrocodone there, not
Vicodin. (they are the same for all you non-pharmacy types)
Another little part of me dies.
(The phone rings)
It turns out that a few days after your doctor wrote your last
prescription, he told you to take it more frequently, meaning that
what Caremark thought was a 30-day supply is indeed a 15 day
supply with the new instructions.
I call your doctor’s office to confirm this and am immediately
placed on hold. I call Caremark to get an override and am immediately placed on hold. My laser printer has a paper jam.
It’s time for my tech to go to lunch.
Caremark issues the override and your claim goes though. Your
insurance saves you 85 cents off the regular price of the prescription.
(The phone rings)
At the cash register you sign….
The phone rings)
…….the acknowledgement that you received a copy of my HIPPA
privacy policy and that I offered the required OBRA counseling for
new prescriptions. You remark that you’re glad that your last
pharmacist told you not to take over the counter Tylenol along
with the Vicodin, and that the acetaminophen you’re taking instead
seems to be working pretty well. I break the news to you that Tylenol is simply a brand name for acetaminophen and you don’t
believe me.

These scare tactics from the news media is just stupid. Please be accurate and unbiased on your reporting not inaccurate and biased.

Im a 5th year pharmacy student and i work for a large busy retail pharmacy as an Intern. This ABC “Special” was degrading to me and to all the pharmacists out there. Instead of focusing on mistakes that occured we should have looked as to HOW they occured. The core of the medication errors rest in the doctors hands…are the doctors ever guilty of this??? The simple answer is NO! They should have done a show on the average time it takes a DOCTOR to write a perscription. I would say it has to be around 4-5 seconds. Its almost impossible to understand the chickenscratch thats written on the perscription and this medication is supposed to save the patients life. This is how errors occur. Pharmacists should be careful ofcourse but tackle the problem before it gets to the point of a possible medication error…make all perscriptions computerized instead of handwritten!

we should never completely trust anyone when it comes to prescriptions or medical care.. my heart goes out to the parents of this beautiful little girl.

Christy RPh, your description of a typical pharmacy customer as stated above (if you skipped it go back!!) was almost dead on. The only thing you missed was the customer cussing, spitting, reaching out to grab, or throwing something at you, your tech, or your cashier. People need to realize how much happens behind that bench; how every customer wants to be, and should be, our top priority. Next time ABC reports, it should be about the lives we’ve saved. Those numbers never get reported either.

Those three steps alone would allow pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to more easily check that what they are putting in a container is the medication that the doctor ordered. They wouldn’t have to rely as much on size, shape and color. This is especially important with generic versions of medications, which don’t seem to have a consistent size, shape or color from manufacturer to manufacturer.
And, more important, it would allow consumers to check (maybe not while at the pharmacy, but at least before they used the medications) that those pills are marked with the same name and dosage as the copy of the Rx that their doctor produced.
It’s not a 100% solution. It doesn’t address the issues of multiple languages or liquid medications, for instance. But I think it would help considerably.
And it’s not rocket science either, just an idea from a consumer who has, fortunately never experienced tragic results from a pharmacy error – and never wants to.
Thanks,
Tom Hayden
Massachusetts

Most of the time when you get a prescription filled at a drug store if you notice it is not the PhD who actually fills the bottle. They now have pharmacy techs who fill the bottles with medication. If you will also notice the pharmacist usually opens the bottle glances at the ingredients and signs off. They do not handle any of the medication themselves. If you can read and pour pills or liquid into a bottle then you can be a part of the pharmacy team. It is sad that we allow our people to be severly damaged and maybe even killed because we do not care to pay qualified individuals to fill these prescriptions. It is not about the people anymore it is about money. Please don’t put all the blame on the pharmacist he/she is doing only what they are paid to do, and that is not to actually put the pills or liquids in those bottles anymore.

Medication errors are a serious issue. However, skewing the focus of the program to make individual pharmacists seem like villians is completely irresponsible journalism on the part of 20/20. Pharmacist are human. Humans by their very nature are imperfect. It is ridiculous to expect a human to ever be perfect. Humans will ALWAYS fail. Instead of trying to punish individuals, 20/20 should have focused on how to make the SYSTEM safer. Do you really think that firing the pharmacists in the 20/20 piece will make things safer? No! Until the system is changed to make the process of filling prescriptions safer, there will always be another imperfect pharmacist who makes a horrific mistake. Everyone, please, do not direct your anger at the individuals. Instead, demand that the system be improved. This is the only way we can make true progess in the national fight for patient safety.

Pharmacists need to accept responsibility for errors and apologize. For those who haven’t gotten an apology I am truly sorry. However as it said in the report the errors they found were mispelled names and too few or too many tablets. That can hardly be counted as an error like having the wrong medication. The error rate of 20% they listed is extremely misleading. There are also other things that compound the situation like doctors handwriting. This isn’t a new problem and they have been working on it for a long time. The Goverenment is already working to force Doctors to have all prescriptions typed so that there are no more handwriting issues. As a side note this isn’t a greed issue on the part of the retail chains. They are not purposely hiring less pharmacists for profits. Pharmacists are over worked because we are currently in a pharmacist shortage. Does no one read the paper? They have had several news stories about the Pharmacist shortage. Firing pharmacists because your name was spelled wrong isn’t going to help. Companies aren’t hiring pharmacists because there aren’t any to hire!
As a patient you need to work together with your doctor and pharmacist to get the correct medication. Please give the pharmacy technician and pharmacist time to do their best job. Please give them your full attention when you are at the pharmacy DO not rush off in a hurry or come in on your cell phone. Please don’t be irritated with them when there is a long line and it is going to take more than 15 minutes for your prescription. You wait for your doctor for sometimes over an hour!! You also need to make sure your doctor has spelled your name right, make sure your date of birth is correct, your phone number and all other viable information. The pharmacists can’t read your mind and do not know this information unless you provide it for them. Slow down! This is your health we are talking about not just french fries at McDonalds! Please do not interrupt the pharmacist when they are talking to another patient to ask which aisle toilet paper is on. They have more pressing concerns like making sure the patient is getting the right medicationt he right dose, there are no drug interactions, etc. This is why we can’t simply “just slap a labe on it and give it to you” like I have been asked to do on several occasions. Please do not get upset with the technician when they tell you that you need to wait for the pharmacist to go over your medication. It is a law every where but everyone still gets upset about it. It also helps to make sure oen more time that it is the right medication for the right patient and that all of your questions are answered. We do make mistakes but please wait your turn so that we can give each patient the proper care that they deserve.

It is critical that individuals take ownership of their healthcare, including requesting a copy of all labs, reports, office visits,etc. And double checking any medication from any source. Healthcare employees do NOT control the work environment and are not able to protect everyone everytime in every case and in every situation.

I dont think people realize that pharmacists (which most of them are Doctors of Pharmacy) spend most of their time on the phone with insurance companies. Many patients take advantage of this and demand that the pharmacy call their company anytime there is a problem. That is time that could be better spent counseling patients or calling doctors. Do you see your doctor on the phone with your insurance company? I think it’s horrible that 20/20 is just picking on Walgreens. Sure Walgreens makes mistakes but so do the other chains across America. Pharmacists catch more errors than then cause…they look for drug interactions, side effects, proper dose for patient. Sometimes, patients are on their cell phone the whole time from when they dropped off the prescription to when they pick it up never acknowleging the staff and ignore them when they ask if you have any questions. I doubt any physician would ever tolerate that in their office? Phamacists give free service to patients every day and are accessible 24 hours a day. Patients would rather talk to them than go to their MD. I just think everyone should look at the big picture. Mistakes happen in the healthcare field that can be fatal. The healthcare “Team” needs to work together to decrease errors.

signing the book doen’t mean they waive their right to consultation… they can ask the pharmacists questions any time

I work for Walgreens. I have been in the pharmacy business for over 10 years. I remember when the child in Chicago was given the wrong Rx years ago. It was a big deal and all over the Chicago news. Why is it you have to dredge it up again? I believe the family WAS compensated, I know that the pharmacist was suspended for a time and fined. This is why there is malpractice insurance, and I am sure that the pharmacist and Walgreens was in court for this at the time. If they were not in court over it then, I blame the parents for waiting so long. I am sorry that it happened to their child, but I know for a fact that if it had been my child, I would have asked a lot of questions and made damn sure exactly what I was giving my child, the color of the pill, the shape and size as well as any markings on it such as numbers and branding. NDCs exist so that we can verify that it is the correct drug we are dispensing. We have so many checks and balances for checking the drugs, at least 5 different checks. Half the time you can’t read what the doctor wrote. We have to call the doctor to find out what medication they want. Sometimes the doctor calls us and asks us what to prescribe for certain conditions knowing full well we know more than they do about drugs because we deal with medications a lot more.
How about the times that the pharmacist catches the doctor’s fatal errors on Rxs that are totally wrong for a certain paitient? Like the serious wrong doseage for a child or the wrong kind of drug for a child. I have seen that happen more times than I care to count! We already have machines filling a lot of prescriptions. Do you really want a machine in charge of your life like that? They make mistakes too and they are not human! If we as humans can not read the doctor’s hand writting, how do you expect a machine to be able to do it? I have read a lot of chicken scratch and have even contributed to the scratching at times, but I will tell you one thing, I put my health in the hands of my neighborhood Walgreen’s pharmacist because I know that he or she is there working to make sure that my prescription is done correctly and that there are no drug interactions that will harm me.
As a matter of fact, if there were more help in the pharmacy during peak hours, all of us would be happy in the pharmacy too! We don’t like making mistakes either. And we do our best not to. I have caught many errors and stopped even more from leaving the pharmacy. There is only so much we can do in the 15 minutes that people want their prescriptions filled. Why is it that people want to rush us when their lives are in our hands? We are not McDonald’s but sometimes I feel like asking people if they would like fries with that because that is how they treat us. I blame people for being impaitient! We have done it to ourselves here in America. If you have to wait for anything you get all upset and it is always ME ME ME!!! Then they have the nerve to say that our customer service sucks. Well, sometimes the customers suck! How many jobs are you expected to read their minds and KNOW how much their insurance is going to cost before you can even type the RX? How many jobs have customers throwing their empty bottles at you and DEMANDING refills and special privledges? Then if their insurance is not up to date it is MY fault that they neglected to inform me that they have new insurance even though I asked them if all their information was correct when they dropped off the Rx. Or how about all those times when I have to spend HOURS on the phone with their bloody insurance because they did not bring their card in? What sort of thanks do we get? NONE! And nothing but critisism from everyone and the media who just make it worse! Thats ok, I will continue to do my job at Walgreens, thank you very much, and do the best damn job I can because we have been in business for well over 100 years and we will be in business for at least a 100 more. I don’t need the media to thank me for my job. My pharmacy staff thanks me and so does my paycheck.

You know, to many times the finger is always being pointed. I am very sadden by the little girl and her family. But for once in a life time take a look at what the retail chains go through. For instance, a patients drops off his/her script. The first question is how long is it going to be. The technician tells them 15 minutes. The patients replies” Are you sure that its going to take that long?” Ya know, so many times I just wanted to say do you want it right or right now. Then the patient goes and stands at the register and stares you down until it is ready. This is not Mcdonald’s people. How come you will go to the doctors office or emergency room and wait hours but as soon as you get to the pharmacy, 15 minutes is to long. Also, many of the times the patient will ask us, what is this for? What you want to blame us and you don’t even know. So you mean that you left the doctors office and didn’t even ask questions. Oh but its all the pharmacys fault. Then you complain that you have to sign a log. Yes it is saying that you allowed/denied to be counseled. Well say yes and let the pharmacist talk to you. Then you know what your taking, what it looks like and any other questions you may have. Instead of being in such a damn hurry and quickly say no. But as soon as there is a problem your quick to point blame. Well if there was a mistake, which they do happen, and you choose to be counseled. The pharmacist told you that it was blue and you got white pills, then you caught a mistake before anything occured. How many times during a day is a patient written a script for amoxicillin and the patient is allergic to penicillin. Most pharmacy systems will catch that, then the technician or pharmacist will call your doctor and notify them of what they have written, and then it is changed. Who’s talking to the doctors? Many times the technicians will ask patients for there allergies and health conditions and the patient will say, I am not allergic to anything that the doctor prescribed. Oh really how do you know. Do you know every drug that is a cephalosporin drug? NO ! So patients you need to tell your doctor and pharmacy what your allergies are, cause you don’t know everything either.So for all you that want the pharmacist to be fired or go to jail get a life or an education. Go to pharmacy school and see how well you do.In my book with all the technology that these pharmacies have they are the police of the health care. Also, all doctors should go to preprinted scripts and YOU the PATIENT should know what you are prescribed and how much you should take before leaving the doctors office. OH maybe you can’t cause you have waited two hours to see them and then spend 15 minutes in the room with the doctor and he is in such a hurry to get to the next patient that he cuts you off, but again ! You want to blame us pharmacy people !!! Get a clue ! You news people need to look at the whole picture. Take your blind folds off.

Pharmacy is exact profession. Mistakes are not tolerated .
Pharmacist and Pharmacist tech are humans and mistakes
are made. We have double and triple checks and
the latest technology to prevent errors.
We don’t try to hide our mistakes. At the pharmacy where
I work when an error is found ,we call the patient
The doctor and file an error form to keep on file.
Pharmacist are devastated when this happens.
Pharmacist and their staff are under tremendous pressure.
Patients want faster service. The chains want less payroll
and cut tech hours and work pharmacist 12 hour shifts.
We fight with insurance companies on behave of the patient.
We have pressures from patient who are abusing drugs
To refill early medication.
I feel that ABC didn’t tell the whole story. Pharmacist
Across America stop mistakes daily in their practice.
They call doctors about prescription that can’t read due to poor
Handwriting, overdoses and Interactions and allergies.
Everyday errors are prevented by pharmacist and their staff.
That needs to be included in any future programs.
At our chain , the customer signs to pick
Up an rx. He signs off on Hippa, safety caps
Prove that he received a rx. And if he wants
Consulting or not. It was started that pharmacies
Were deceiving the patient when they sign.
America should be told about how pharmacist prevent errors.
We are the last health care link between the Doctor and
The patient when it involves medications.
America should be what the pharmacy profession does
To make sure we don’t have filling errors.

I appreciated this topic about Pharmacies – in particular the larger chains who just seem to be in it for the dollars and not for the consumer’s education . First I believe a Pharmacy should post the “five rights to medication” at the pharmacy . This would provide a guideline to all people about rights to which all in the field are taught ( all Pharmacy/Physicians/ and their support ).(The Right Patient, The Right Medication, The Right dosage, The Right Route (of administration) and The Right Time ) We as consumers need to become educated.
What am i signing at the pickup counter should be the first question ? And Otc products should not be readily accessable if there is a potential for interactions with rx medications as you portrayed ie: aspirin being purchased with rx coumadin. As a Pharmacy technician myself I feel there are many concerns your program brought to light and I look forward to improving and not just fluffing off these issues. Looking forward to a follow up.Thankyou Karen

It is important for people to remember that we as pharmacists are always balancing two issues equally: 1) To do what is legally and ethically correct 2) To do what is in the best interest of the patient’s health. A mistake is just that…an honest mistake…we try our best to fill each prescription with care and the best interest of the patient in mind. 99% of pharmacists are truly remorseful when errors occur. The cases represented in the 20/20 story and very sad and regretable, however, they are the exception, not the rule.
I want to echo what other pharmacy staff have mentioned already on this posting….we prevent medication errors multiple times a day and the consumer will never even know it. Many patients treat the pharmacy staff with NO respect (the respect that any human being deserves and that we DO give them.) And many patients think alot of the SERVICES we provide are part of our job description and owed them, when they ARE NOT. This increases our work load. Honestly, many issues (ie. no more refills left, insurance/pricing issues, etc) have NOTHING to do with us and can actually be handled by the patient themselves. Patience, understanding, and respect on the part of the patient would greatly improve the outcome of each prescription as a whole. Would errors still occur?? Probably. Are you without mistakes?

The people that are saying that pharmacists that make mistakes should get fired are just plain ignorant. We are human. We make mistakes. We don’t do them purposely with the intensions of hurting a patient, that would be the exact opposite of our purpose of working in the health care field. No matter how hard we try and how careful we are to prevent these mistakes from happening, it is inevitable. MISTAKES HAPPEN. If everyone in any field of work was fired for making a mistake, everyone would be out of a job. NO ONE IS PERFECT 100% OF THE TIME!
Even if we are 99.9% perfect, that still leaves .1% room for error. We cannot control which few out of the millons of prescriptions filled daily will end up in error, and we apologize to those patients and their families for the adverse reactions they cause. But you can’t punish all of the drug stores just because it happened to happen at a certain store.
By boycotting a pharmacy because there is a pharmacist who made a mistake there is foolish. You’re risks are no different at the next pharmacy, whether it be another chain store, hospital pharmacy, or even independent pharmacy. You cannot assume the next pharmacist will not make a mistake. Maybe not to you, but what about one of the other hundreds of people they serve?

As a retail pharmacist, I am shocked and upset by this 20/20 story and these blogs by uninformed and ignorant people.
First of all, I would like to apologize to each and every person who unfortunately had a medication error because of a pharmacy error. These errors are mistakes, not done on purpose. As a pharmacist, it is difficult to fill prescriptions while the phone is ringing off the hook, people honking their horn in drive-thru because the person in front of them is taking too long. The customer at the counter who is yelling at my technician because his rx is not ready yet after 5 minutes, while I am trying to read a dr’s horrible handwriting. There are many distractions I must face each day. Have I have made errors? Of course I have, I apologize immediately and offer to do anything to make the situation correct. I am upset about the lack of apologizes when it comes to med errors, there are some bad apples. But I challenge anyone to tell me what field is there no errors?
To make things worse, every pharmacy in America is considered “overbudget” by corporate offices. How can I fill 600 rx’s with just 2 pharmacists and 4 techs all day? Working in those conditions, a error is guaranteed to happen. Something needs to be done to have better working conditions. This will help dramatically. Corporations should eliminate all drive thru’s in pharmacies or restrict their use. Drive thru’s are the worst thing to happen to pharmacy and should be used for fast food only!!
I also blame some of my patients for these errors and society. People are always in a hurry and do not want to wait the necesary time to get a rx filled. I have people waiting 8 hours in an ER, but will not wait 20 minutes to get there rx filled accurately. People treat this profession as fast food and say” its just a box right, why do I have to wait this long”. Also, people expect me to know their copays and what their insurance is. I get hassled everyday for unimportant, stupid things by customers. Do not get upset with things that are not under my control!

U.S. Pharmacy erros:
I watched with great condolence for the victims and families. I have gone thru some mistakes that were caught by me ( I have a tendency to verify almost everything).
I am an Electrical Engineer specialized in automation, and I can come with a machine that can check what the pharmacist dispensed with quantity check also. I would like to make a separate organization that will give part of the earnings of producing such machine to the families of the victims or the victims themselves if they are alive. If maybe ABC wants to promote, endorse or find the funds to start R&D and the making of the first machine, I will be more than happy to take the challenge. I estimate that with the available technology today we could have the first prototype within a year.
Thanks.
Paul Farina
Electrical Engineer

Let’s do some math here….many of you are posting filling 400 scripts/day. That sounds about average. I work in a fairly new Walgreens store that only does about 250, but the store 3 miles up the street does 500-600. So, let’s use 400 as the average. Most Walgreens are open 8am to 10pm, thats 14 hours. This comes out to almost 30 prescriptions per hour. With 60 minutes in an hour THAT GIVES YOU 2 MINUTES PER PRESCRIPTION. That is not a lot of time review all that needs to be reviewed such as dose, frequency, interactions etc. Yes, the computer system is set up to catch a lot of that, but lets not forget that the phone is ringing, there is someone in the drivethru, a someone else is fussing about their co-pay or their insurance is not working, a doctor is on the phone, and someone else needs to know about over the counter cold medicine. Working in pharmacy is a constant balancing act. I would like to see a story focusing on the day of a pharmacist.

The errors that resulted in tragic consequences brought tears to my eyes and a chill up my spine. Please do an expose as to WHY these occurred, such as 12 to 14 hour days standing on your feet, no breaks,constant interruptions, and a system designed to get the prescriptions out in 15 minutes or less. All the technology in the world won’t completely prevent errors if you have a tired,overworked, pharmacist who perhaps needs a break for either caffeine (a coffee break) or to raise blood sugar ( a snack or meal ).

How does Walgreens or any other pharmacy correct mistakes if they don’t keep track of their errors? No reason to keep track? That’s absurd.
Yes, mistakes are human, but the public assumes that a pharmacist is filling the prescriptions, and not a high school student. Let’s face it. If the pharmacies can get away with paying their employees as little as possible, they can afford to keep adding more stores to their chains. They can also well-afford to pay $21 million and any other lawsuits that come up, with the money they are saving by paying lower wages. $21 million is a slap on the wrist to them.
If these mistakes were made public, the average citizen would hopefully realze that he or she should examine each purchased prescription carefully to see if it is correct. The public needs to wake up and realize that we must look out for ourselves and our families. Blindly trusting pharmacies, doctors, or medications is a mistake.
Thank you, ABC, for airing this story.

MISTAKES HAPPEN. WERE ALL HUMAN. SOCIETY WANTS EVERYTHING NOW RIGHT NOW!! WHY WOULD A PATIENT COME TO A PHARMACY AND RUSH AND COMPLAIN TO A STORE MANAGER BECAUSE THEY HAD TO WAIT 15-20 MINUTES OR LONGER. COME ON!!!ITS NOT FAST FOOD, IT’S YOUR LIFE!!LET THE PHARMACIST OR PHARMACY TECH, DO THERE JOB. WITHOUT WORRYING IF THEY WILL GET WRITTEN UP BECAUSE A PATIENT HAD TO WAIT FOR THERE PRESCRIPTION. PHARMACIST ARE THERE FOR YOU ON WHATEVER YOUR NEEDS MAY BE. WHY THREATEN THEM SO YOU CAN GET HOME FASTER. GET HOME FASTER BY KNOWING YOUR MEDS OUR ACCURATE AND FILLED CORRECTLY. DO’NT SLAP YOUR PHARMACIST IN THE FACE FOR NOT HURRYING. PHARMACIST ARE THERE FOR YOU. FOR YOU.

I have an idea..how about 20/20 focuses on the great things pharmacist do. Just from my 3 years expierence as a pharmacist, I have prevented many medication errors from happening, some of them were serious and potentially fatal. I am only one pharmacist..now imagine this nationwide. Lets not forget the millions of rx’s are filled correctly, when a small percentage are wrong and an even smaller percentage is serious. Maybe this program will give what pharmacists truly need to improve patient care such as more staffing.
I do agree what someone mentioned earlier..they should do a story at a Walgreens that fills 1000 rx’s a day and see all the problems and distractions that come up in one day.But I guess that will not go well in TV ratings…

When I see a report like this, it really makes me wonder what else the news is telling me. Its funny that although these errors happen “all the time”, the most recent case they could come up with was 8 years ago.
I am a Pharmacist at Walgreens and there is not one pharacist within the entire company that does “350 scripts/day” as the lawyer in the report states.
As for reporting errors nationally… dostor’s don’t do this. What about all the script errors we catch from doctors before they get to the patient? Should they be reported and be held”criminally responsible” as some very misguided people have stated. No, we are all human. Let me come to your job with the police when you forget to give me french fries with my order. If you are not criminally accountable, neither am I. There is the forgotten eliment of intent here.
I beg of the people who saw this, to take it with a grain of salt. Should you be carefull with your own scripts. Absolutely. I always encourage my patients to show me any errors(no matter how big/small). Not only do I apologize, but I thank them for bringing it to my attention. This is not the exception, but the norm. I have worked in pharmacy for 11 years(since I was an ignorant and useless 16 year old at my first job). I have worked in 2 states. Care for the patient is of as much importance to pharmacists as it is for doctors. That is the goal. Nothing else.

Well to begin with, I’ve been a pharmacist for 49 years and have been fortunate enough to have never worked in a pharmacy with a drive-in window. I guarantee you these windows were not invented by pharmacists and are not used by independent pharmacies.
I was in retail for 36 years and a tech one day said to me, after a typical frustrating day, the problem with you pharmacists is that you have no b___s.
You’re afraid of the store mgr.,the district mgr., the main office, the customer etc etc.
If we had the b___s she was refering to we wouldn’t be all be working for someone else our whole profesional lives.
Virtually all medical professions are in business for themselves.
Eugene White R.Ph. in Virginia (look him up) had the right idea.
Pharmacists are also the only medical professionals who do not not in any way touch a patient-therefore we are all afraid to get to close to them. I have seen so many pharmacists talk to a patient while holding on the their RX counter like it was their security blanket. Their Pharm D. degree is a waste of time and money if they are going to work in a retail store, with a non degreed store manager as their boss.
Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that if we continue working the ridiculous pressured hours that we are forced to and we can’t or won’t open our own business’ then we have no option but to form a union or as it is called in California, societies. It’s because we don’t have enough b___s to fight for our proper working conditions that we need a third party to do it for us. What a sad state we’re in.

I guess you get what you pay for.
It’s all due to poor reimbursements from insurance companies who use the big Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) as their negotiating club. Medicare-D being the greatest culprit these days.
And self-centered, weak leadership in the drugstore industry and regulatory boards as well.

As a pharmacist working at a large chain pharmacy, I can understand the anger and frustration that many people who have been affected by prescription errors have. Errors occur in every profession but are much more serious when they involve health care, be it in a hospital, physician’s office, or pharmacy setting. Many people do not realize what a stressful job working behind the counter can be. I work across the street from a hospital where people wait for more than 11 hours in some cases before they are seen. When they come to the pharmacy, however, they want to be in and out in less than 10 minutes and are upset when that isn’t possible. On a typical day, pharmacists deal with having to visually inspect every prescription and drug that passes through that pharmacy, taking prescription over the phone and the ones left on voice mail and e-mail, counseling patients both in person and on the phone, check all new prescriptions for appropriate dosing and directions and potential interactions with ALL of a patient’s current medications, and keeping track of EVERYTHING that every technician who works in the pharmacy is doing (because, ultimately, the pharmacist is responsible for everything that could go wrong, regardless of who committed the error). And unless the pharmacy is doing between 800 to 1000 prescriptions per day, often times there is only ONE pharmacist on duty at a time (who, time permitting, gets 15 to 30 minutes for lunch but still has to remain in the pharmacy). The 20/20 special touched on the overworked aspect but didn’t really explain how much we do at the same time. This does not excuse the mistakes that do occur, but I hope that it sheds some light on why they occur. As far as apologizing when mistakes do occur, I think that’s the result of fear that pharmacists will be sued the minute they admit fault. It is a shame because I have found that apologizing and showing concern goes a long way to satisifying a person who has had a medical error happen to them. It should also be mentioned how many times a day pharmacists PREVENT potential errors from occuring because of inappropriately written prescriptions through calls to the doctor’s office.

Fellow pharmacists,
I am thrilled to see that public awareness has ben raised to an all new level concerning the problems within the system…
…but please, stick up for yourself tomorrow when you go to work! INSIST that you have a break when you need it. INSIST that you eat lunch. INSIST that you talk to every single patient that needs to know about thier medications. INSIST that patients take responsibility for their health care and call the insurance company themselves or the MD to order their own refills. INSIST that patients come into the pharmacy or go elsewhere… unless medically necessary. INSIST that you take care of your patients to the best of your abilities no matter what amount of money it costs CVS, Walgreen’s, or any other big name pharmacy chain. Sure, they will sell fewer drugs, but you will be doing what you are there to do… serve patients. RECLAIM the professionalism that these chains have stolen from us.
The pharmacists are the only ones that can do this. After all, the chains cannot make money without us unless they resign to selling ice cream, beer, and cigarettes… which is a completely different story.
Pharmacists, please, stand up for who you are, what you have worked hard to achieve, and why you do what you do… if we don’t no one will.
Steven

I am a pharmacy technician, who attended a local community college for one year to obtain my certification as a pharmacy technician. I originally planned to attend pharmacy school, but after working in the field for a few years and witnessing our pharmacists work 14 hour shifts, go to the restroom once every 6 hours, work major holidays, be harrassed by the corporate office about completing insignificant paperwork,deal with extremely rude patients, and often miss a lunch, I changed my mind and decided to become a high school social studies teacher. I will be finished with school in a year and a half. I can identify with pretty much everything the pharmacy employees stated above. I myself, always try to give 110 % when doing my job, and I also apologize to anyone who has had a misfill. I also take prescription drugs for a few health conditions, and have been fortunate to never experience a misfill. I would like to add that pharmacists also have to deal with patients addicted to narcotics, who are constantly calling to see if their doctor approved their refill, Patients who waited until the last minute to call in their refill, and then realized they had no refills remaining on their blood pressure medication, patients angry because we do not keep a rare drug in stock,and patients who are mad at their doctors office or insurance company(who for some reason like take it out on us). We are also expected to know every answer about each type of insurance plan too. In my store,we do not play with any questionable handwriting by physicians or an odd sig (directions). We immediately call the physician and explain to the patient we do not feel comfortable filling their medication and they may have to wait a little bit. I would like to also add that i have witnessed many incidents where our pharmacists prevented a catastropic event, but that doesnt get reported in the news does it? Please remember that we realize when you are ill and do not feel well. We want to complete the order for you as soon as possible. I honestly believe that many people are inpatient when wating on a prescription. While i totally agree we should be able to peform under the pressure, too much pressure can contribute to errors. Please also remember when dropping off 4 or more prescriptions, on a Monday afternoon, to not expect your order to be completed in 10 minutes! I am proud of my store and hope that the public can realize there are still many good pharmacies out there.

From: James R. Kuperberg, Ph.D.
To: ABC News
Re: Your Friday, March 30, 2007 story “U.S. Pharmacy Errors….”
Your story did a significant injustice to the profession of pharmacy and to the concept of news reporting. The story was, at best, is misleading and suggests that you have diminished ABC to the level of the Fox programs that pretend to provide news.
First, you neglected to put the story in perspective. Pharmacy, which provides “mission critical’ service millions of times a year without error is a model of care and professionalism. Your examples, although tragic, are hardly representative of the day to day professional care rendered by pharmacists in many practice settings.
Second, you failed to look to the root cause of the problems you pretend to understand and report. It is quite simple (and simple mined) to take cheap shots; it would serve the public to actually investigate and report in a way that enlightens and provides consumers with information they can use to stay safe in a complex and dangerous health care system. You suggest that the use of pharmacy techs increases the incident of error; in fact having a second set of eyes examine the prescription and involved in filling the order decreases the potential for error. The work of techs, although not infallible, is most often accurate and is always checked by a second person, the registered pharmacist.

There are a lot more pieces to this puzzle than what you represented. There is a chronic shortge of pharmcists that is getting worse every year…that in concert with an aging population that has more drugs to take. It shouldn’t take 7 years in a college to count tablets from one bottle another. There should be an itermediate licensed position. In hospitals, it is the techs that make all the IV’s and pull drugs for pharmacist check.
As far as the aspirin bottle, what about the person who had a big bottle at home already? Patients need to take some responsibility and read the the drug inserts. Many retail scripts are not dropped off or picked up by the person they are written for. Dig deeper folks, you are only scratching the surface.

This 20/20 piece on pharmacies caught my attention as a pharmacist. I have been working in retail pharmacy over the last 5 years in two different chains starting as a pharmacy cashier, then a pharmacy student intern, and as a registered pharmacist for the past 2 years. I appreciate the value of investigative reporting such as this piece by ABC’s 20/20 to raise awareness of an issue. However, this particular report was extremely sensational, one-sided, and preys on a patient’s worst fears: inept staff, life-threatening errors, and loss of personal rights.
As an example of the first, ABC mentions that the majority of the people behind the counter are not pharmacists and that some of them are high school students. They even imply that these high school students are filling the prescriptions instead of pharmacists. They utterly fail to mention that all of these individuals are supervised by a registered pharmacist who is responsible for the accuracy of all prescriptions and that this individual has often completed 6 years of relevant training. State Boards of Pharmacy place very precise limits on the number of workers that a pharmacist can supervise at a time. Therefore, depending on the size of the pharmacy, the pharmacy staff may consist of pharmacists, technicians, pharmacy student interns, and cashiers. Each individual has a specific role in the pharmacy and only the registered pharmacist can give the final approval regarding the accuracy of the medication. The age of the person typing the prescription is irrelevant because the pharmacist must always compare what they’re dispensing to the original paper written by the doctor. Most of the teenagers I have worked with perform accurate work, are receptive to my suggestions, and have the energy required to keep the ever-increasing pace of pharmacy workflow. However, the credential-conscious patient can always check the pharmacy wall to see if the pharmacy employs certified technicians—all of whom must be over 18 years of age. With this piece, ABC’s 20/20 has frightened patients into doubting the pharmacy without presenting the role of the person within the prescription-filling process.
The second fear is that of a life-threatening error. The journalists use the examples of a young girl who was poisoned by the wrong medication and of a woman who received a ten-fold overdose of a blood thinner. Errors like these are unacceptable, have the potential to cause irreparable harm, and must be prevented. Both cases are very unfortunate. I’m left wondering if the physician wrote Coumadin prescription with an unnecessary decimal point (for example: “1.0 mg” can be misinterpreted as 10 mg), a very common source of dosing errors. Please assure the public that pharmacists learn from these mistakes and seek to improve the dispensing process to prevent such events from happening.
The most inflammatory comments made in the 20/20 report regards the pharmacist’s Duty to Counsel. In reality, what my state (Florida) requires is that pharmacies make an OFFER to counsel with all new medications. These laws require that a registered pharmacist must be present and available to answer questions upon request, but there is no legal requirement to counsel every patient. Furthermore, I have seen that the vast majority of patients are in a hurry and do not wish to speak with the pharmacist. Signing the sheet provides a written log that the offer was made and is often used in low-tech pharmacies as a record that the prescription was picked up. Stating that a patient is waiving “the legal right to counseling with a pharmacist” by signing a paper is inaccurate. It is inflammatory to suggest that pharmacists are involved in a deceptive practice to avoid patient counseling. The pharmacist remains one of the few people that patients can turn to at any time of the day or night to get information regarding their medicines.
Stories like this have the potential to cause an uproar that leads politicians to pass reactionary legislation. I stress the importance of avoiding bad policies by lawmakers who have no healthcare background because several such policies have emerged in recent years. My state is currently considering legislation that would turn pharmacists into controlled substance policemen. New regulations place new—often unnecessary—record-keeping burdens on already over-worked pharmacy staff, take away time that can be focused on counseling patients, and potentially increase the same error rates they mean to curb.
20/20 also did not present any underlying causes for pharmacy errors. Did you notice the long lines at the pharmacy drive-thru in the clip? How about the hurried demeanor of the pharmacy staff? The main reason why pharmacies have to fill larger amounts of prescriptions faster each day is because there is a demand for more and faster pharmacy services. Increased marketing of drugs to consumers, the nature of chronic disease, decreasing reimbursement by insurance carriers, and the faster pace of modern life all contribute to the problem. There is a shortage of registered pharmacists, many of whom go into areas other than retail because of the high stress involved. Yet we fill more because you want more and we fill faster because you want it faster. During almost every shift I work there is at least one patient in a hurry that instructs me to just slap a label on a bottle and asks “how hard can it be to fill” the prescription. Obviously, I do not comply with this request.
The journalists should inform people of some of the things pharmacies are actually doing right and about simple things they can do to increase the safety of their medications. As integral members of the healthcare team, pharmacists prevent harmful interactions and catch physician errors every day. We also provide useful drug information to those who ask. Here are some of the things I encourage my patients to do for safer medication use:
• Get all your medicine at the same pharmacy so they can keep an accurate medication history. Many patients see different doctors and specialists who may not be aware of medicines prescribed by the other doctors. Keeping all of your prescriptions at the same pharmacy allows the pharmacist to check for interactions and duplication of your medicines among providers.
• Keep a list of the medications you are currently taking. This becomes very important if you ever have to be admitted to a hospital or be seen by a different provider. By giving them a complete list of medications, you help them make better choices with the medications you will get during your visit and avoid interactions with some medicines that may stay in your body for a few days after your last dose. The list will also help you remember to get your refills on time.
• Know the shapes and colors of the pills you take. Please talk to your pharmacist if you ever get a pill that looks different from the one you had last time. Often it is just that the pharmacy is using a different manufacturer, but you can help avoid serious mistakes by bringing this up.
• Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are taking any non-prescription medicine, nutritional supplements, or herbal remedies. Remember that items that do not need a prescription are still drugs and can interact with other medicines you take.
I suggest that you share these and other recommendations with your viewers. Thank you and regards.

One possible way to reduce pharmacy errors might be an electronic system developed to allow physician initiation of prescriptions into an online system that would cross check the prescription against the patient diagnosis and flag any potential issues and errors. The pharmacist would access this same prescription system directly when filling it and would further use a bar code scanner to verify (and possibly gain acess to) the medicine prescribed.
No system is flawless, but these changes may help reduce errors and improve service.

This report definately has inaccurate, one sided information, and instills a lot of unecessary fear. The title of the article itself has a problem: reporting mistakes of a pharmacist won’t solve medication errors. All the program did was effectively show that medications (Rx, OTC and supplements) all cause great harm. Reducing medication errors are the responsibly of the industry, prescriber, pharmacist, and especially the patient. But reporting and placing blame on an individual as this article suggest is definately the wrong direction

I think doctors are also to blame.
Their handwriting is like “chicken-scratch” & it hardly discernable.
If their prescription is hardly legible, they are also responsible.

How about, when you have to get a prescription you make sure that you have the right one. Double check yourself, in front of the pharcist..Here lets use this example, If you were selling your car for 5000 dollars and the buyer handed you cash Are you going to take their word for it or count the money? Of course you are going to count the money b/c people make mistakes. And yes reports should be published on prescription mistakes by phamacys so we can actually recognize whether it was an honest mistake or just carelessness.

I think that it is important to state that a mistake in a pharmacy is serious and can be the difference between good health, serious injury, or death. I am seeing a lot of opinions thrown out there by bloggers who say how stupid pharmacists are for making mistakes. It is not that difficult to make a mistake in a pharmacy especially if you have ever read the hand writing of some doctors. Many of the drug names are very similar. Yes, mistakes happen, but people have to realize that when they come into a pharmacy that it isn’t McDonalds.
I have worked in a pharmacy and I have had customers get mad at me when I have had to tell them they would have to wait 15 to 20 minutes. They would tell me, “All you have to do is slap a label on a bottle, why does it take so long?” Just have a little patience with your pharmacist and always, always check your medicine before you take it. If you are not sure about a medication always questions. Question anything you are not sure about. It is the pharmacist’s responsibility to get your medication to you correctly, but take personal responsibility to double check it yourself.

I’ve been a pharmacist since 1982. When I practiced in retail, I had this fantasy of placing a VERY large sign at the pharmacy counter.
It would read: If you want your prescription filled instantly, please go elsewhere and have that pharmacist kill you.
There has been quite a bit of babbling on this topic, eh? I think the bottom line is simply… the bottom line. The USA mantra is “make money”. Unfortunately, no matter what the cost in human suffering. I don’t think anybody really wants to change the status quo in retail pharmacy (except the unfortunate soul of a pharmacist working there), because corporate america gets the money it wants, the insurance company saves the money it wants (cost + $1.25 dispensing fee and be glad you’re getting that you greedy pharmacist!), the patient gets what he wants (fill it NOW! Just how long can it take to count to ten?), and the lawyers (and hence the patient) gets what they want: PAYDAY! God bless this system!
Tongue in cheek aside. Everybody please slow down. Give the R.Ph. a break. He really does not want to hurt you. He wants to help you.
Last but not least: I am old enough to “only” have my 5 year B.S. in Pharmacy degree. Am I a lesser pharmacist that a new grad with that sparkly new 6 year Pharm.D (uh, the last year is spent being slave labor in the field. No class work. ;) ?

Pharmacists & Pharmacies should be held to the same standards as everyone else in the healthcare field. Mistakes do happen and I appreciate human error. However, having high school students fill prescriptions that go unchecked is apalling. The problem and my experience appears to always be the lack of staff and a definite lack of educated staff. Sounds like money wins once again over the safety of the consumer.

I am a Registerd Nurse and we use the five rights when giving out medication.
The Five Rights are:
The Right Medication
The Right Dose
The Right Time
The Right Route
The Right Patient
I don’t know that pharmacies are held to this, but there has to be something in place.
I believe that all errors should be reported. As a nurse you can lose your job, as well as your license for making mediation errors. Not everyone who receives a prescription knows what it should look like, or if it is the wrong medication, or the wrong dose. I do suggest that if something doesn’t look right question it.
I have seen nurses reported to the state for administering the wrong medications to patients, and as far as I know Pharmacists are licensed and they too should face the same penalties if they dispense the wrong medication.
Mistakes do happen, we all make them, but as Health Care Professionals one mistake could injure someone for life, or kill them. I know the pharmacy can be a busy enviornment, but there has to be better safegaurds in place.

I thought that the media’s response to these situations were irresponsible and ignorant. The anger that should have been mainly directed towards the giant money-hungry pharmacy chains was instead directed at the pharmacists and the technicians. Of course, pharmacists and technicians will make some mistakes, they are human. I’d like to meet a human being that has never made a mistake. Pharmacists do make an effort to eliminate any errors because even one is too many. But it’s difficult when the drug chains expect pharmacists to fill 300 prescriptions in one shift. Although there is a shortage of pharmacists, drug chains are opening up more and more pharmacies. Is that the pharmacists fault? The question that everyone should be asking themselves is, “Do I want the right drug or just any drug as fast as they can fill it?” Give the pharmacists enough time to ensure your safety. AND take the time to get counseling, don’t blame the pharmacist because you’re too impatient to hear what they have to tell you.

After reading some of the above blogs I did not think the 20/20 special was fair. I didn’t see anything about patient responsibility or auxillary labels. When someone gets a script from the doctor they should ask what the drug is, strength, dosing, side effects, chemical (generic) name, and is it safe with other meds. The part about the Warfarin they showed did not show the auxillary labels on the medicine bottle stating not to take with aspirin w/o talking to doctor and on the aspirin bottle it clearly states not to take with anticoagulants. I realize that couseling is required on all new scripts, but what if the pharmacist was on the phone with a doctor and the patient didn’t want to wait? I’m sure that could have happened and 20/20 didn’t want to show it. People should realize there are 2 sides to every coin, and TAKE SOME PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY for your own life.

I am a Certified Pharmacy Technician, licensed in the state of Virginia. When I moved back to the state of Colorado I was unable to find employment. Why? Salary. In Virginia the average salary of a licensed technician is approximately double that of what is paid in Colorado to an unskilled worker. What incentive is there for companies like King Soopers, Albertsons, Wal-Mart Pharmacys etc. to hire licensed professional Pharmacy Technicians at $16/hr. when they can have their own on the job “training” for parttime teenagers and then pay them $8/hr pocketing the difference?
As long as a cashier or person from the deli can be pulled to work in the pharmacy we’ll continue to have this “errors”. It’s time the public demand the medical boards regulate this health profession just as Nursing, X-Ray Technicians, Dental Hygiene and others. If they don’t then the government should step in to protect the public at large.

As a Michigan pharmacist we just had our medicaid fee cut to $2.50 per prescription. To save the States short fall. Using the average estimated retail prescription cost of $50.17, the manufacturer receives $37.93 (75.6%), the wholesaler $1.67 (3.3%) , the insurance $?.?? (They won’t tell anyone) most insurance pay the pharmacy around $3.50. What is the missing piece of the pie?
As far as fast food goes if you walk into the yellow M store of Coronary artery disease and bought $50.17 worth of “food” do you think that company only makes $2.50 on the sale. If you do, you are the only clown in the building. I hope I give you more than you pay for.

I know this is kind of off topic but another problem with retail pharmacy I have encountered is dealing with customers that transfer back and forth between several stores because of their coupons. They want to get that $20 off in groceries or merchandise for the sake of their personal safety. Patients need to realize that swapping pharmacies can cause tragic errors because the pharmacist will not know of any other medications they are on which could lead to life-threatening or fatal drug-drug or drug-disease interaction that they can’t detect. Who’s responsible there? The patient who wanted the $20 coupon so they can buy a gallon of ice cream and 10 frozen pizzas. I just hope that’s not your last meal. Find a pharmacy and stick with it. And many times when you ask someone if they have any questions after counseling them, they only ask about their copay or coupons! It really shows where most of society’s priorities are today. Not on their health for sure as evidenced by the ballooning of the American waistline. I also blame chain pharmacy corporations for promoting these coupons. The bottom line should be patient safety and service, not the number of scripts sold.
Pharmacists simply are rushed too much in the retail world. Many of them don’t even take any real breaks. They eat as they work just to get through a 10-14 hour shift and some I know just skip eating altogether because they’re too busy. You don’t think being tired or hungry affects your ability to work? Then there’s the patient (I use that term loosely) who can’t wait longer than 5 minutes to get their prescription filled. Yes the actual process of filling that one script takes no longer than that, but many times there are problems that come up with insurance because of missing/incorrect information or drug not covered or needs a prior authorization, doctor calls needed for verification of a script or for a refill request because the patient didn’t look to see if they had refills, driver’s licenses needed to fill for a controlled substance or OTC pseudoephedrine product, answering questions a patient has over the phone or in the pharmacy including OTC drugs, taking physician offices prescriptions over the phone/voicemail, and simple things that interrupt the flow such as patients who call constantly about whether or not their doctor has called in their Vicodin or Xanax or how much their copay is. All of this happens

I should note that CVS Pharmacy is gonna be the sole sponser of World News on ABC on April 23rd ,Its hard for me to believe that this report was NOT somehow biased against Walgreens. At the end ABC doesnt give a rats ass about pharmacy mistakes but in fact this was all a show on how “bad” walgreens is and how “good” cvs is (as noted by the one CVS pharmacist in the report who comes running out of the store to ask if the patient had any questions…..who does this seriously unless they know…..) This was nothing more than one big Anti-Walgreens campaign sponsered by CVS, and no I dont work for Walgreens, nor have I ever worked for them or CVS, I just tend to look at all news reports with less than 1/4 of a grain of salt. I mean why not report on some harder more important issues, like how corrupt our present governmetn is and that its basically run by a bunch of contractors getting their bank accounts fat through this “war”…but thats too hard for reporters…besides this is a different story all together….oh and I expect this to be deleted by ABC too before many people can read it….

Have we totally gotten away from the poor child that isn’t going to play with her brother now becuase of this error? Lets get back to the point and stop calling people names. This isn’t elementary school!
When you enter any healthcare field you go in knowing that you are there to help people. That is your JOB! You are going to make mistakes…you aren’t perfect. You try really hard not to make them but it will happen. When mistakes happen you try to fix them as best humanly possible. And APOLIGIZE!
I am a nurse. I do not work behind a counter but I can say I feel very sorry for the pharmicists who are overworked. But at least Walgreens could have said they were sorry and tried to fix the problem in the future. It doesn’t look like they are doing that at all.

There is never an excuse for medication errors but mistakes will happen since no one is perfect. This report was only showing one-third of the story. It did not mention the responsibilites that patients and doctors have.
When a new med is picked up pharmacies are required to ask if there are any questions but patients rarely seem to care or even pay attention when being helped at the pharmacy counter. Patients somehow believe that a drive-thru at Walgreens is the same at Burger King. They want IT THEIR WAY and FAST. It takes time to fill a prescrition accurately and many people are very impatient. Meds are also given with information about the drug’s usage, side effects and precautions which a lot of patients do not read. I am not excusing errors that pharmacists make but patients have a responsibility to themselves to be familiar with their meds.
Doctors have a shared responsibilty in errors as some are unfamiliar with how to spell a drug, the strength it comes in or writing legibly. Errors are unfortunate and the responsible pharmacist should always apologize but patients and physicians should acknowlege their roles in these occurrences.

nice forum you have going here.. thanks for the resource

My deepest sympathy goes with the girl and it is very unfortunate that this happened.I personally work as a intern pharmacist in walgreens.Most of the pharmacies are severly short of technicians and pahrmacists.Most technicians are severly under paid(8/hr) and most people dont want to work in pharmacy for the stress they undergo.Many opt for better jobs with less stress and leave.Most of the times the walgreens dont hire enough people and expect most pharmacies to run with only one technician and one pharmacists.Corporate greed is the main reason for errors.The workers are severly stressed out and work several hours without any break.So there is a very high chance of making errors eventhough the pahrmacist is higly trained also.The pharmacist and company should have apologized for the mistake happened.We should also bring Laws to regulate the number of hours pharmacists are working, a cap on the prescriptions they are filling each day and more time should be spent in patient counselling.Also all presciptions should be printed rather than the use of ”chicken-script” by doctor.It will decrease errors by almost 97% I say. Most pahrmacists I met worked very dilignetly to help patients i whichever way they can eventhough there are some bad apples.That cannot be avoided as we are humans and also we are not error proof.I think patients can get a better service and accuracy if they camoe inside pharmacy rather than through the drive through.A little time more will be difference between safety and drug error.

I do think there should be regulation required by the government to fix this system,regardless of who doesn’t approve of it, the public has a right to know these error’s are being committed and why shouldn’t they,when i go to the pharmacy to get a script filled i am told 1 half hour or one hour period no less, and i have been going to the same pharmacy for 6 year’s and yes there have been error’s i caught myself, being given the wrong medicine and given medicine’s that i have been allergic to and some that have a cross reaction probability to

I have seen many pharmacies with inexperienced techs working who do not know how to read error messages on their screens when they process prescriptions and it delays the medication for the patient, especially if it is because they refill it too soon. The background noise is deafening and you cannot hear and that creates error, They need to be trained better than they are

When pharmacists are busy, they make more mistakes, but it`s not always possible to wait, just don`t be in a rush, patients should take the time to get detailedi nformations about how to take a drug.
Errors happen not just when the wrong medicine is dispensed, but when the right medicine is taken at the wrong dosage, and many drug names look alike.

Why not have a picture on label of what pill should look like so it is easily recognized by all us untrained eyes that have to go online to see what the pill SHOULD look like? I recently found lexapro pills in a prescription I just received. The only way I was able to identify what it was, was by doing research online with the markings, etc. Scary!

I am currently going to school to be a pharmacy tech. I understand that the pharmacist and pharm tech jobs can be rather fast paced and overwhelming and they teach us that is school. I do not believe that every person who makes a mistake (as many people do) are ‘stupid’ rather, they are over looking their mistakes.
I believe that the pharmacy system needs to be changed in a dramatic way to prevent errors. Now I know that many pharmacist will catch the error before it goes out, but what happens when that one slips away from them because they are overwhelmed with a number of things and miss it? It goes out and something like what happen to this little girl is the result. And my apologies and prayers go out to this family. I can’t even begin to think about what something like happening to my son.
I do believe that all errors, even the little ones should be reported and maybe even posted on a website that the public can see and evaluate whether or not they want to go to this pharmacy. I believe that there should be serious consequences the errors that may potentially threaten someones life or health. The little errors such as putting the doctors name or something should be addressed as well and after so many little mistakes I believe that this person should be reprimanded on some level.
In the medical field there is a slim area for error. This is someones health and life we are talking about.
Possibly changing the way pharmacies are run may be a great deal of help to the pharmacy, its employees, and its patients. Maybe there should be a limit on patients they can handle (if there isnt one already, I am unsure), there should be more than one pharmacist on staff, well trained techs, there should be a system of possibly 3 checks per one prescription. Stop working in such a fast pace, I understand that these drugs need to go out but c’mon, let’s be safe rather than sorry. There should be someone in charge of answering phone calls and taking peoples questions…possibly a 3rd pharmacist…I know that companies are trying to cut down on expenses and hiring more employees will only cost them more…but wouldnt it be worth it in the long run to spend more on employees rather than having to pay a family millions of dollars because of a mistake that a pharmacist made? Anything is worth doing if it means that my patients are safe and healthy.

This is a wonderful opinion. The things mentioned are unanimous and needs to be appreciated by everyone.
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David