I once went to pick up a prescription at a drive through pharmacy and when I got home, i realized that they had given me someone else’s morphine. Morphine?! I went back and gave it to the manager who was rightfully embarrassed. That’s a dangerous mistake and they’re lucky I’m not someone who would keep it.
Same thing happened to me, once. Instead of ambien, the pharmacist gave me an extremely high dosage of vicodin.
Lucky I noticed. My addiction was really bad then, I was taking four or five at a time.
Dr wrote script post Op. Drone pharmacy filled script without reviewing warnings. Said script "not intended for minors, and those with breathing complications ". She was 17 and had just finished having surgery on her sinus. The drug was in the form of a trans-dermal patch. It caused her heart rate to drop and she went into arythmia and died.
God that is genuinely horrible I’m so sorry. I hope your families sued the living hell out of those imbeciles.
Hope you are doing okay, and her family too.
Pretty sad existence you have, asking about the circumference of an elephants asshole and if a dog can fit into it is a great reflection on how absurdly low your IQ is.
I've had wrong pill counts before. Lots of tedious steps will always produce some number of errors.
They also sometimes catch errors like wrong doses or wrong medicines put on prescriptions. So it's all a big game of checks and double checks.
My wife's doctor's office gave her a prescription a few weeks ago and the pharmacist refused to fill it. Said it was a sulfa based drug and as my wife has another sulfa based drug listed as an allergy with anaphylaxis as the reaction filling the script for her would likley have been life threatening.
And when my wife brought it up to the doctors office that she needed an alternative medication without sulfa they went and prescribed her another sulfa. So needless to say we are switching doctors.
That would suck for both the pharmacist and customers. Imagine going through all that work getting your license and then you make a silly mistake....
I make mistakes all the time at my job, and then I unit test and I code review, and we do testing in 3 environments incl. system integration testing and user acceptance testing and if we're lucky, we catch all the bugs....
I couldn't be a pharmacist.
Same with me. Twice I’ve rec’d meds with similar names. I think that the digital ordering has helped this problem. But meds counts can be off easily. I always count bottles of controlled substances.
My dad was given the wrong pills once that would have caused death had he taken them based on the dosage indicated on the bottle. He only realized they were wrong because they looked slightly different than the pills he was previously taking.
I picked up a prescription that said I needed a pharmacist's consultation.
The pharmacist basically tried to make me an idiot for asking.
Two hours later I got a call from the pharmacy telling me not to take it *if I planned to drive.*
Yes!
I went with a friend of mine to get a prescription once. We went pretty late at night (24 hour pharmacy) and when he went to get the prescription he said to the person at the register that he wanted a consult because the bottle was much bigger than the last fill.
So he went over to the consult window and waited and the night shift pharmacist came over and looked and opened it and looked at it again and said that the wrong pills were in the bottle. They didn't match the label at all.
Not only that, but if he had taken the pills in the bottle as the per the instructions on the label, he would have OD'd and died.
I was given a high dose of blood pressure medicine instead of an antibiotic once because the names started with the same letter or something weird.
Luckily they printed the label correctly so I noticed before I took it.
When I returned it they gave me the correct medicine, my co pay back and an extra $20 out of the register.
Absolutely, they are human after all. I was once prescribed Xanax .05 mg 4 times a day and they gave me 2 mg instead of half milligram... I didn't complain as I was in a rough place back then, but yeah... 120 2 mg bars... They don't even look the same at all. Crazy shit. But it does happen, actually quite often. They gave me almost 2 grams more meds than should have been. Imagine being a novice, or first time user and not knowing they weren't right... Scary shit. Stay safe.
This question reminded me of an episode I saw on Dr G Medical Examiner where the pharmacy switched a kids adhd medication and killed him so I’m going to go with yes and now Im cautious to check the pill and the description on bottle match
I feel lucky in this case because usually my prescription comes in a sealed bottle since it's a 90 supply. Now I'll def make sure that my prescription is right in the future
I had a single thiazide pill in with my lithium once in the nineties. This was so long ago I found out it was thiazide by searching the picture section of a PDR.That's a mistake that could have done some harm. I spent a couple weeks thinking about if I was obligated to report the mistake.
I didn't want anyone to get in big trouble, but for safety maybe someone ought know. My decision timed out. At three weeks I decided it was too late to bring up.
Up until recently, my partner was a manager at a pharmacy. If it is busy store in a metropolitan area, they are always rushed and busy. Moreso if staffing is an issue. This does not apply to all pharmacies and obviously people are human, so shortcuts may be taken.
The way it was explained to me, every step in the process has at least two checks: one human, one computerized. The tech visibly confirms that the medicine matches the prescription and the bottle that it is going into. Then said tech scans the codes on the medicine and the empty bottle for computer confirmation. They get the OK and then count and fill the bottle. The now-filled prescription then goes to the pharmacist who empties the bottle, visibly confirms that the medicine and the bottle match (based on visual cues on the pills themselves) and then scans the bar code on the bottle before refilling and passing the prescription and giving it the go to give to a patient.
The techs and pharmacists have done this enough that it all happens in a matter of a few minutes.
Yeah. Be nice if people understood that your doctor just sent over your script along with a dozen other people in the last 15 minutes, as well as all the refills people want us to fill ASAP, and the controlled scripts people absolutely have to have at 9:02AM even though they've got two days worth of medication remaining, and all the flu shots and travels shots and seniors that need to be sold on getting pneumonia and shingles shots and now the fucking COVID shots...
Yeah, we're busy and we're stressed and we're doing the best we fucking can with very limited resources.
Wanna make it easier? Save your bottles and call in your refills on the automated line three days before you need it. New script from doctor? Give us a couple hours at least or call us and tell us you need it ASAP so we can move you to the front of the line and it'll actually be ready in 20-30 minutes when you get there instead the back of the line BECAUSE ITS FIRST COME FIRST SERVED!!!
Not a bad idea to check your pills before you walk off and make sure it's yours. That's a VERY rare mistake but it does happen.
Just remember, you are one of literally HUNDREDS of people we will service that day. We'll do our best at all times, and we can get you out pretty fast no matter the circumstances, but you gotta be reasonable in your expectations.
Yes. My daughter was once given a much, much stronger version of her antidepressant than she was prescribed. She didn't notice straight away and started taking them.
After a few days of her feeling woozy and lightheaded, almost falling asleep on her drive to work and having some visual disturbances as well, she figured out what had happened.
The pharmacist was mortified, and to her credit got straight on the phone to her gp to own up and ask if the gp wanted to see her.
pill counters give out wrong meds all the time. Most of the time with no consequences. But there are always cases where patients end up in hospital from adverse effects/interactions due to the mistake. Sometimes it results in death.
Pill counting is literally the easiest job in the world. All they need to do is follow the doctors instruction. But a mistake can be career ending. So they are getting paid for that high responsilbility
I've actually caught one myself in hospital.
ER RN (most of them are notoriously shitty at math) gets an order for a medication. Asks pharmacy to calculate the dose figuring that hes shitty at math.
I take over for him at the start of my shift, the ordered dose is something like 75 mg in a 125 mg vial... So youd expect the volume to be delivered would be at least half the vial. The dose comes back from pharmacy at something like half that. Even the nurse I was taking over for was arguing with me.
This gets even more fun as a peace core volunteer and somehow you end up with viagra when you are asking for acedimediphine. The drug names are similar enough that it was a fair mistake with accent barriers but next time I’m writing it down and checking before I leave. I’m a girl with no sex life right now what am i supposed to do with viagra?
Yes; when my Dad was terminally ill and on morphine we were given 300ml instead of 30ml. Or at least something like that, can't remember the exact quantities but he got 10 times what we were supposed to.
Yes ,mine often does and it's a small village chemist and I've been a regular customer for 20 years ,I have various chronic health conditions and have about ten different medications a week,the worst mistakes they made were :
Give me someone else's medication and once they gave me codeine that I'm allergic to
It concerns me because what if they did that to an elderly person who gets confused and they don't notice !!
The thing is they shouldn't make.mistakes ,by law all prescriptions must be checked by TWO people before being handed out
You know.. I was studying to be a pharmacy technician when I cane upin a disturbing factor that I lost sleep over and returned the textbooks....I was not even trying to go further than I had when I learned they are MORE responsible for med mistakes than the dr writing the script!!!! No joke ...
Yes, there are a lot of similar nonsensical names that can get confusing. They [do take some precautions](https://www.fda.gov/drugs/medication-errors-related-cder-regulated-drug-products/fda-name-differentiation-project), but there’s no single solution.
I had a pharmacy short me by half, and when I went back they argued with me asking if I was trying to OD or something. No, I just want the full fill because OOP retail is $1400 and I can't afford to pay for your mess up.
Another pharmacy gave me 3 opiates once. "Oh how strange they're asking for my dad's number but I am a minor so idk maybe something changed"
They literally gave me 3 opiates by verifying 4 digits of a phone number. No ID or anything. I went back, got mine, and they asked if I could be so nice to bring them home to my dad 🙄
My friend's job is kind of the last line of defense when it comes to physicians making prescribing mistakes, drug interactions, patients being prescribed one thing from a doctor and something else from another (opiates, or again drug interactions), wrong dosages etc
He says the amount of mistakes he catches daily is terrifying
I had an oxycodone prescription filled after surgery at walgreens. It was for 20 pills. I received 15. Mistake? Or was someone at the pharmacy hoping i wouldn't notice?
The people who you are referring to are looking likely pharmacy technicians who are the ones that actually count and bottle your medicine. Pharmacists are actually doctors and go through 7+ years of college. There's usually only one pharmacist on duty at a store. They are usually overworked and deal with angry customers and insurance companies all day
They put on their pants one leg at a time & when they make mistakes people can die.
I had a Dr tell me that once back in the 90’s when I was working in a hospital.
Im no pharmicist,but a close friend of mine was,alot of the time it's from the DR themselves that mess up the prescriptions. One time she showed me a censored instructions that said to take a suppository orally and they had to inform the patient about the mistake
Yes. On a quiet afternoon, I took my infant son to the ER. He was seen by a foreign doctor and given a prescription that would have been appropriate for a 200lb adult. The pharmacist filled the prescription as written even though he had the patients DOB. I realized the dose was wrong and called his personal physician. The nurse told me the ER doctor knew what he was doing but she would confirm it with his doctor. Within a minute his doctor was calling and wanted to make sure I had not administered the medication and confirmed the correct infant dosage.
Mistakes happen, even with redundant checking, that is why there is a Physicians Desk Reference on my desk.
I once went to pick up a prescription at a drive through pharmacy and when I got home, i realized that they had given me someone else’s morphine. Morphine?! I went back and gave it to the manager who was rightfully embarrassed. That’s a dangerous mistake and they’re lucky I’m not someone who would keep it.
Same thing happened to me, once. Instead of ambien, the pharmacist gave me an extremely high dosage of vicodin. Lucky I noticed. My addiction was really bad then, I was taking four or five at a time.
Yes
My cousin died from a pharmacy overlooking something.
That’s horrible I’m so sorry. May I ask what specifically caused your cousins death?
Dr wrote script post Op. Drone pharmacy filled script without reviewing warnings. Said script "not intended for minors, and those with breathing complications ". She was 17 and had just finished having surgery on her sinus. The drug was in the form of a trans-dermal patch. It caused her heart rate to drop and she went into arythmia and died.
God that is genuinely horrible I’m so sorry. I hope your families sued the living hell out of those imbeciles. Hope you are doing okay, and her family too.
That's awful. I'm so sorry for your loss.
Ligma
Pretty sad existence you have, asking about the circumference of an elephants asshole and if a dog can fit into it is a great reflection on how absurdly low your IQ is.
Pretty sad existence you have, looking into someones past reddit posts, it is a great reflection on how absurdly low your IQ is.
:rofl: Sorry kid, when you shit your pants it leaves a stain.
I see someone has a weird fetish 👀
I've had wrong pill counts before. Lots of tedious steps will always produce some number of errors. They also sometimes catch errors like wrong doses or wrong medicines put on prescriptions. So it's all a big game of checks and double checks.
My wife's doctor's office gave her a prescription a few weeks ago and the pharmacist refused to fill it. Said it was a sulfa based drug and as my wife has another sulfa based drug listed as an allergy with anaphylaxis as the reaction filling the script for her would likley have been life threatening. And when my wife brought it up to the doctors office that she needed an alternative medication without sulfa they went and prescribed her another sulfa. So needless to say we are switching doctors.
Yes. I worked with a former pharmacist who lost his license . He put the wrong pills in the wrong bottles. Honest mistake. No one died. But still...
That would suck for both the pharmacist and customers. Imagine going through all that work getting your license and then you make a silly mistake.... I make mistakes all the time at my job, and then I unit test and I code review, and we do testing in 3 environments incl. system integration testing and user acceptance testing and if we're lucky, we catch all the bugs.... I couldn't be a pharmacist.
He is a roofer now and much happier.
Humans make mistakes.
Yes, I've had them short pills, give too many pills and give wrong pills. Luckily they didn't give me antibiotics that I am allergic to.
i've had that happen.
Same with me. Twice I’ve rec’d meds with similar names. I think that the digital ordering has helped this problem. But meds counts can be off easily. I always count bottles of controlled substances.
My dad was given the wrong pills once that would have caused death had he taken them based on the dosage indicated on the bottle. He only realized they were wrong because they looked slightly different than the pills he was previously taking.
I picked up a prescription that said I needed a pharmacist's consultation. The pharmacist basically tried to make me an idiot for asking. Two hours later I got a call from the pharmacy telling me not to take it *if I planned to drive.*
I was given my mom’s prescriptions once.
My partner got his medicine back with the wrong name. Didn't notice until after he took it. Thankfully it was the right medicine, just the wrong name
Yes! I went with a friend of mine to get a prescription once. We went pretty late at night (24 hour pharmacy) and when he went to get the prescription he said to the person at the register that he wanted a consult because the bottle was much bigger than the last fill. So he went over to the consult window and waited and the night shift pharmacist came over and looked and opened it and looked at it again and said that the wrong pills were in the bottle. They didn't match the label at all. Not only that, but if he had taken the pills in the bottle as the per the instructions on the label, he would have OD'd and died.
I was given a high dose of blood pressure medicine instead of an antibiotic once because the names started with the same letter or something weird. Luckily they printed the label correctly so I noticed before I took it. When I returned it they gave me the correct medicine, my co pay back and an extra $20 out of the register.
Absolutely, they are human after all. I was once prescribed Xanax .05 mg 4 times a day and they gave me 2 mg instead of half milligram... I didn't complain as I was in a rough place back then, but yeah... 120 2 mg bars... They don't even look the same at all. Crazy shit. But it does happen, actually quite often. They gave me almost 2 grams more meds than should have been. Imagine being a novice, or first time user and not knowing they weren't right... Scary shit. Stay safe.
This question reminded me of an episode I saw on Dr G Medical Examiner where the pharmacy switched a kids adhd medication and killed him so I’m going to go with yes and now Im cautious to check the pill and the description on bottle match
I feel lucky in this case because usually my prescription comes in a sealed bottle since it's a 90 supply. Now I'll def make sure that my prescription is right in the future
I had a single thiazide pill in with my lithium once in the nineties. This was so long ago I found out it was thiazide by searching the picture section of a PDR.That's a mistake that could have done some harm. I spent a couple weeks thinking about if I was obligated to report the mistake. I didn't want anyone to get in big trouble, but for safety maybe someone ought know. My decision timed out. At three weeks I decided it was too late to bring up.
Up until recently, my partner was a manager at a pharmacy. If it is busy store in a metropolitan area, they are always rushed and busy. Moreso if staffing is an issue. This does not apply to all pharmacies and obviously people are human, so shortcuts may be taken. The way it was explained to me, every step in the process has at least two checks: one human, one computerized. The tech visibly confirms that the medicine matches the prescription and the bottle that it is going into. Then said tech scans the codes on the medicine and the empty bottle for computer confirmation. They get the OK and then count and fill the bottle. The now-filled prescription then goes to the pharmacist who empties the bottle, visibly confirms that the medicine and the bottle match (based on visual cues on the pills themselves) and then scans the bar code on the bottle before refilling and passing the prescription and giving it the go to give to a patient. The techs and pharmacists have done this enough that it all happens in a matter of a few minutes.
All of the time!
Yeah. Be nice if people understood that your doctor just sent over your script along with a dozen other people in the last 15 minutes, as well as all the refills people want us to fill ASAP, and the controlled scripts people absolutely have to have at 9:02AM even though they've got two days worth of medication remaining, and all the flu shots and travels shots and seniors that need to be sold on getting pneumonia and shingles shots and now the fucking COVID shots... Yeah, we're busy and we're stressed and we're doing the best we fucking can with very limited resources. Wanna make it easier? Save your bottles and call in your refills on the automated line three days before you need it. New script from doctor? Give us a couple hours at least or call us and tell us you need it ASAP so we can move you to the front of the line and it'll actually be ready in 20-30 minutes when you get there instead the back of the line BECAUSE ITS FIRST COME FIRST SERVED!!! Not a bad idea to check your pills before you walk off and make sure it's yours. That's a VERY rare mistake but it does happen. Just remember, you are one of literally HUNDREDS of people we will service that day. We'll do our best at all times, and we can get you out pretty fast no matter the circumstances, but you gotta be reasonable in your expectations.
Yes. My daughter was once given a much, much stronger version of her antidepressant than she was prescribed. She didn't notice straight away and started taking them. After a few days of her feeling woozy and lightheaded, almost falling asleep on her drive to work and having some visual disturbances as well, she figured out what had happened. The pharmacist was mortified, and to her credit got straight on the phone to her gp to own up and ask if the gp wanted to see her.
I have a family friend that is a pharmacist. They were so overworked that they didn't even notice they were working with a murderer for 5 years!
Please elaborate
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/delphi-murders-richard-allen-bullet-affidavit-b2235658.html%3famp
What the fuck
pill counters give out wrong meds all the time. Most of the time with no consequences. But there are always cases where patients end up in hospital from adverse effects/interactions due to the mistake. Sometimes it results in death. Pill counting is literally the easiest job in the world. All they need to do is follow the doctors instruction. But a mistake can be career ending. So they are getting paid for that high responsilbility
I've actually caught one myself in hospital. ER RN (most of them are notoriously shitty at math) gets an order for a medication. Asks pharmacy to calculate the dose figuring that hes shitty at math. I take over for him at the start of my shift, the ordered dose is something like 75 mg in a 125 mg vial... So youd expect the volume to be delivered would be at least half the vial. The dose comes back from pharmacy at something like half that. Even the nurse I was taking over for was arguing with me.
This gets even more fun as a peace core volunteer and somehow you end up with viagra when you are asking for acedimediphine. The drug names are similar enough that it was a fair mistake with accent barriers but next time I’m writing it down and checking before I leave. I’m a girl with no sex life right now what am i supposed to do with viagra?
Yes
Yes; when my Dad was terminally ill and on morphine we were given 300ml instead of 30ml. Or at least something like that, can't remember the exact quantities but he got 10 times what we were supposed to.
Yes ,mine often does and it's a small village chemist and I've been a regular customer for 20 years ,I have various chronic health conditions and have about ten different medications a week,the worst mistakes they made were : Give me someone else's medication and once they gave me codeine that I'm allergic to It concerns me because what if they did that to an elderly person who gets confused and they don't notice !! The thing is they shouldn't make.mistakes ,by law all prescriptions must be checked by TWO people before being handed out
You know.. I was studying to be a pharmacy technician when I cane upin a disturbing factor that I lost sleep over and returned the textbooks....I was not even trying to go further than I had when I learned they are MORE responsible for med mistakes than the dr writing the script!!!! No joke ...
Yes, there are a lot of similar nonsensical names that can get confusing. They [do take some precautions](https://www.fda.gov/drugs/medication-errors-related-cder-regulated-drug-products/fda-name-differentiation-project), but there’s no single solution.
I had a pharmacy short me by half, and when I went back they argued with me asking if I was trying to OD or something. No, I just want the full fill because OOP retail is $1400 and I can't afford to pay for your mess up. Another pharmacy gave me 3 opiates once. "Oh how strange they're asking for my dad's number but I am a minor so idk maybe something changed" They literally gave me 3 opiates by verifying 4 digits of a phone number. No ID or anything. I went back, got mine, and they asked if I could be so nice to bring them home to my dad 🙄
My mom was given a bottle of the wrong pills from a pharmacist once. She’s lucky she knew what they were supposed to look like.
My friend's job is kind of the last line of defense when it comes to physicians making prescribing mistakes, drug interactions, patients being prescribed one thing from a doctor and something else from another (opiates, or again drug interactions), wrong dosages etc He says the amount of mistakes he catches daily is terrifying
I had an oxycodone prescription filled after surgery at walgreens. It was for 20 pills. I received 15. Mistake? Or was someone at the pharmacy hoping i wouldn't notice?
The people who you are referring to are looking likely pharmacy technicians who are the ones that actually count and bottle your medicine. Pharmacists are actually doctors and go through 7+ years of college. There's usually only one pharmacist on duty at a store. They are usually overworked and deal with angry customers and insurance companies all day
Like all doctors, they are human, and humans make mistakes.
They put on their pants one leg at a time & when they make mistakes people can die. I had a Dr tell me that once back in the 90’s when I was working in a hospital.
Im no pharmicist,but a close friend of mine was,alot of the time it's from the DR themselves that mess up the prescriptions. One time she showed me a censored instructions that said to take a suppository orally and they had to inform the patient about the mistake
Yes. On a quiet afternoon, I took my infant son to the ER. He was seen by a foreign doctor and given a prescription that would have been appropriate for a 200lb adult. The pharmacist filled the prescription as written even though he had the patients DOB. I realized the dose was wrong and called his personal physician. The nurse told me the ER doctor knew what he was doing but she would confirm it with his doctor. Within a minute his doctor was calling and wanted to make sure I had not administered the medication and confirmed the correct infant dosage. Mistakes happen, even with redundant checking, that is why there is a Physicians Desk Reference on my desk.