Prescription Drug Errors

Any incorrect or wrongful administration of a medication can lead to serious injuries. This can include a mistake in dosage or route of administration, failure to prescribe or administer the correct drug or formulation for a particular disease or condition, use of outdated drugs, failure to observe the correct time for administration of the drug, or lack of awareness of adverse effects of certain drug combinations.

The Boston personal injury lawyers at Bellotti Law Group, P.C. understand that medication errors can and should be eliminated with proper training and standardized pharmaceutical practices. An improperly filled or mistakenly identified prescription can lead to serious, or even fatal, injuries. If you or a loved one has been injured by a drug error, call the Massachusetts lawyers at Bellotti Law Group, P.C. at 617-225-2100 for a free telephone consultation. You may be entitled to monetary compensation for your medical bills and lost wages.

May include difficulty in reading handwritten orders, confusion about different drugs with similar names, and lack of information about a patient's drug allergies or sensitivities. A doctor may prescribe medication without considering all of the patient's symptoms and medical history. Often, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others who are charged with prescribing and administering your medication do not properly inform you of the health risks associated with a certain drug, which may lead you to severe health problems.

The types of errors may occur at any point during the process of selecting, prescribing and dispensing medications. It can be the administration of the wrong drug or prescribing the incorrect dose of a drug. The most frequent type error are those made by the nurses and doctors when administering medication, though pharmaceutical mistakes contribute to this issue as well.

Although Massachusetts has passed laws aimed at reducing prescription drug errors, mistakes are still made due to inexperience, a lack of attention to detail, and miscommunication between members of the treatment team, including doctors and pharmacists and the patient.

• Prescribing or administering the wrong dosage
• Prescribing or administering the wrong medication
• Giving a patient incorrect dosage instructions
• Dispensing the wrong medication
• Overmedicating a patient
• Under medicating a patient
• Dilution errors
• Administering the medication in the wrong form, i.e. taking a tablet instead of an injection or liquid
• Failure to explain potential side effects

If you believe you or a family member suffered a serious or disabling injury through negligence on the part of the doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or another individual who played a role in the administration of your medication, contact the Boston medical malpractice lawyers at Bellotti Law Group, P.C. today at 617-225-2100. Our experience with the investigation and presentation of medical malpractice claims throughout Massachusetts can help you obtain compensation.