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It only takes one medication error to turn your life upside down. A single prescription or dosage mistake has the potential to be deadly. Our New Jersey personal injury attorney is here to help.
Though completely avoidable, medication errors occur with regularity. This is your inside look at the consequences of such errors and legal options in the aftermath of those unfortunate events.
The Impact of Medication Errors
A medication error can occur at the point of prescription, during drug administration, and in between these points. Though government regulators have set guidelines to decrease the frequency of such unfortunate events, they still occur and sometimes prove lethal.
Adverse drug events (ADEs) lead to nearly 100,000 hospital deaths per year. Such events are harm stemming from medication along with harm from drugs administered at the wrong dosage including overdoses.
Adverse drug reactions (ADR) are not the same as adverse drug events (ADEs). Reactions are unintended and harmful responses to medications taken at regular treatment doses. It is possible for an ADR to result from an ADE when taking medication. However, there is also the potential for adverse events to arise without relation to medication.
Medication errors also have the potential to cause sentinel events. Such events are surprising occurrences that cause psychological injury, physical injury, or death. Taking a medication at the wrong dosage level has the potential to be hazardous. Such a hazardous experience is referred to as a medication misadventure.
A Matter of Life and Death
A prescription or dosage mistake has the potential to ruin a patient’s life. Even a slight error in dosage can be lethal. In some instances, patients who’ve taken too many pills end up in the hospital. It is sometimes necessary to pump patients’ stomachs or perform other life-saving medical procedures after a completely preventable medication error.
Though few know it, medication errors are one of the most common types of medical malpractice and negligence in the nation. Personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits alleging medical malpractice are filed with surprising regularity.
Examples of defendants named in medication error cases often include:
- Doctors
- Pharmacists
- Nurses
- Hospitals
Though it isn’t always easy to prove a medical professional made a prescription or dosage medication error, this legal hurdle becomes more easily surmountable with the right personal injury attorney. Medical malpractice attorneys review the facts of the case to establish a causal relationship between the prescription/dosage mistake and the health problem or death.
Schedule Your Medical Malpractice Case Analysis
Have you been injured as a result of a prescription medication dosage error or other form of negligence? Perhaps you lost a loved one after a prescription medication dosage mistake. If you suspect or know a medication error caused pain, injury, or death to yourself or a loved one, don’t suffer in silence. Contact our New Jersey medical malpractice law firm today for a case analysis.