Seven Things You Can Do to Help Reduce Prescription Errors

I just got off the phone with a very upset patient who discovered that her pharmacy has been giving her the wrong medication for the past 5 months, substituting a similarly spelled antibiotic for her rheumatoid arthritis med. She was tipped off when she realized how bad she had been feeling of late and decided to check the expiration date of her med, only to find it was the wrong drug. I won’t get into the unethical behavior of the pharmacist when she pointed out the error, something I’ll be reporting on her behalf to both the head of the pharmacy chain and the state Pharmacy board. But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that, despite all our fancy technology and advances in healthcare, medication errors can and will occur. So what can you do, as a patient, to be sure that your prescriptions are correct? 1. Keep a list of your current meds with you at all times. Include brand or generic name, dose and frequency. Paper, online, or on your phone – wherever its easiest and most accessible. But a paper list in your wallet will cover you in emergencies, so consider that even if you use your phone routinely. 2. Cross check and update your med list with your provider at every visit. In quality parlance we call it medication reconciliation, and it’s one of the most important things we docs do at a patient visit.  You’d be shocked how many patient come to a visit without knowing the names of the drugs they are taking. Now, if I go to...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: Medical Practice Women's Health emr medication reconciliation prescription errors Source Type: blogs