What is a medication error?
The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP) defines medication errors as follows:
A medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer. Such events may be related to professional practice, health care products, procedures, and systems, including prescribing, order communication, product labeling, packaging, and nomenclature, compounding, dispensing, distribution, administration, education, monitoring, and use.
The NCCMERP also classifies medication errors according to the severity of their outcome; i.e., the harm to the patient. The classification system measures on a scale of whether the patient was harmed and to what degree, including: No Error; Error, No Harm; Error, Harm; Error, Death.
- No Error includes Category A, which are circumstances or events that have the capacity to cause error.
- Error, No Harm includes Categories B, C, and D. These are circumstances where an error occurred but the error did not reach the patient, an error occurred that reached the patient but did not cause patient harm, or an error occurred that reached the patient and required monitoring to confirm that it resulted in no harm to the patient and/or required intervention to preclude harm.
- Error, Harm includes Categories E, F, G, and H. These are events where errors occurred that contributed to or resulted in temporary harm to the patient and required intervention, required initial or prolonged hospitalization, contributed to or resulted in permanent patient harm, or required intervention necessary to sustain life.
- Error, Death is Category I and means an error occurred that may have contributed to or resulted in the patient’s death.
When an incident falls into Categories E through I, it’s time to speak with a Dallas pharmaceutical negligence attorney to find out your rights. We have successfully sued pharmacies and pharmacists in claims involving pharmaceutical errors, including cases where:
- A patient was prescribed Lamictal at an excessively high dose, even though that dangerous drug was not indicated for use in treating his condition. He developed Stevens-Johnson Syndrome as a result.
- A patient on blood thinners was prescribed Bactrim, which carries a risk of internal bleeding when combined with blood thinners. The patient died as a result of this internal bleeding, and we successfully sued the pharmacy and prescribing physician.
