Medication errors can kill or severely injure a person. Even a simple medical mistake can have life-threatening consequences.
About 82 percent of adults in the U.S. take at least one medication, and 29 percent take five or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Adverse drug events – meaning patient harm resulting from a medication – account for nearly 700,000 emergency department visits each year.
Medication errors may occur as a result of:
- Incorrect procedures
- Order miscommunications
- Patient monitoring issues
- Product labeling or packaging errors
- Product defects
Patients who were injured by a medication error are urged to report the problem to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, which works closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to address drug safety issues.
Protecting victims’ legal rights is also very important. It may be difficult to determine alone exactly what happened and who is responsible, but one this is clear: health care professionals must be held accountable when their negligence hurts another person. Contact the medical malpractice attorneys at Anapol Weiss if you or a loved one may have been a victim of a medication error.