A recent newscast on CNN relayed a story about a young girl who went to her pharmacy and picked up what she thought were prenatal vitamins. Three weeks later, when she miscarried her pregnancy, she discovered that the so-called "prenatal vitamins" were actually a pill to treat Hodgkins disease that is designed to interfere with cell growth and DNA development. The parmacist had mixed up the pills (which had similar names) and given her the wrong prescription. One simple error cost this young woman her child.
It is estimated that 30 million pharmaceutical dispension errors occur at outpatient pharmicies each year. From these mistakes, as many as 7,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year. From infants to the elderly, it seems as though no one is safe from what should be a relatively simple task: picking up your prescription from the pharmacy.
According to Consumer Affairs, as the number of prescriptions in the U.S. is growing, the number of pharmacists is steadily decreasing. This is bound to create problems in the future with more mix-ups and errors because it means that there will be more work and fewer workers, which always leads to easily avoidable mistakes.
Considering the fact that most college students take some sort of prescription medicine - be it birth control pills or allery medicine - this is a looming threat to the safety of our students.
The first thing is to verify with your doctor before you head to the pharmacy what the drug that you are going to be receiving is called. Especially if you can't read your doctor's handwriting, have him verbally repeat the name of the medicine for you and write it down if necessary. That way, you'll be aware of what you SHOULD be receiving. It's also a good idea to make sure you know what dose of the medicine you should be taking.
At the pharmacy, ask the technician to verify the name of the drug that he or she is giving you, and compare that with what the doctor told you that you should be receiving. Make sure that the name on the bottle matches the name that the doctor gave you. If you want, you can open up the pill bottle and show the technician just to be absolutely sure that the pill is the right one. If it looks different than pills you have received in the past, question it. When it comes to your safety, you can't be overly cautious. You can also verify with the pharmacist that this is the drug used to treat a sinus infection, or asthma, or whatever your problem may be.
Make sure you save all of your pharmacy receipts and the drug fact sheet that comes with your prescription. This way, you are sure what drug you should be receiving and what it is used for and will have a record of what drugs you actually received.
With these simple steps, students can be assured of safety when picking up their medicine prescriptions. Unfortunately, the world is not as safe of a place as we would like it to be, and human error is bound to happen. At least we can be somewhat assured that we did all we could to assure our own safety and the safety of those around us in order to reduce the possibility of incorrect drug reception.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/10/25/pharmacy.errors/index.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/pharmacy_errors.html
http://arthritis.about.com/od/arthritismedications/a/pharmacyerrors.htm
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