According to the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) a report published 10 years ago, found that prescription drugs killed over 100,000 people in our country each year. That is 3 times as many as are killed by automobiles – making prescription drug death the 4th leading killer after heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
In a more recent study, 50 pharmacies in 6 cities throughout the US were evaluated on their dispensing accuracy rate. The study found an overall accuracy rate of 98.3%. That’s 77 errors per 4,481 prescriptions. The authors of the study concluded that prescription dispensing mistakes occur at a rate of 4 errors per day in a pharmacy filling 250 prescriptions a day. If you do the math – with over 3 billion prescriptions being filled annually – there are over 50 million prescription errors.
- Ask Questions (Doctor/Pharmacist)
- Take your time
- Check the name of the medication
- Check the dosage
- Check the directions
- Ask about drug interaction
- Ask about side effects
- Don’t be in a hurry
If you or a loved one is a victim of pharmacy/pharmacits error that caused a serious injury, contact us to see if we can help.
