Can your medication be doing more harm than good?

Physicians prescribe and administer medications to cure illness and relieve discomfort. They also advise medications to patients to prevent disease. But you must consider that medications are chemical substances that, when ingested, can have adverse effects on our bodies. That is the reason only medical professionals can prescribe medications. However, no matter how experienced the physician is, they are only human. They do make mistakes. Medication errors caused by your health care provider can be detrimental to your health.

How do medication errors happen?

The health care process should follow methodological practices. Your physician should identify the problem and carefully assess the best solution. Failure to provide a standard of care when prescribing or administering medications can not only be harmful, but it can also be fatal. Here are ways your health care provider can make medication errors:

• Your health care provider did not obtain your allergy history
• Your physician misdiagnosed you and prescribed the wrong medicine
• Using the incorrect diluent to reconstitute the medication
• Miscalculating the dosage can cause a patient to underdose or overdose
• Improper scheduling of doses
• When the health care provider administers expired or improperly stored medication
• Inadequate patient communication
• The health care provider failed to account for drug interactions

Negligence is one of the leading causes of medical errors. Physicians are incredibly busy individuals. Even the slightest distraction can lead them to reach for the wrong patient chart or fail to account for medical reactions before prescribing.

Medication errors can lead to wrongful death

Ingesting the wrong drug, receiving the wrong dose and failing to account for drug interactions can be a precursor to wrongful death. You rely on health care providers to cure you, and they have a duty to do so with due prudence. They should not be prescribing medicines without fully knowing your medical history and studying the side effects of the medication.

If you think you lost a loved one due to medication errors, you may have a medical malpractice claim. You deserve to know how they died and what caused their death. If the death was preventable, you have the right to recover damages for the pain and loss.