Pharmacy Errors and Serious Injuries

In the summer of 2006 MSNBC.com reported that each year as many as 1.5 million Americans suffer a serious injury or death because of errors made in the dispensing, prescribing or taking of prescription drugs. In an earlier report published by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, it was estimated that each year more than 7,000 people in the United States die from pharmacy related medication errors. Last year, in the nationally syndicated program 20/20, ABC News reported extensively on this problem. Regrettably, from all statistics, it appears that pharmacy negligence is on the rise.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist” as one would say to recognize the cause for these rising errors in the pharmacy business. Many of the pharmacists working at nationally recognized chains are often overworked pulling lengthy shifts sometimes back-to-back. The pressures upon them can lead to fatal mistakes. If a pharmacist makes a mistake and dispenses the wrong drug to the wrong patient with the wrong condition, a serious injury or death can occur and, unfortunately, it may too late before the victim of the negligence can take steps to protect themselves from the mistake.
Because errors by pharmacists and national pharmacy chains can cause irreparable harm to innocent patients, one would think that the national chains would decrease the burdens placed upon the pharmacists charged with the dispensing of increasingly powerful drugs. Nonetheless, the ever-increasing demand for profits at these businesses creates ever increasing demands on the pharmacists with ever-increasing mistakes being a concomitant result of placing profit over safety. As the recent news reports have shown, this problem will not go away unless changes in the pharmacy industry occur.