Tips To Safeguard Your Recovery From Falling Foul Of Medication Errors

Author: David Brason

Medical Research Council have been the life blood of development into healthcare medication. Last year in 2013/2014 they spent £845.3m on research. To which some of this was spent on development of 900 products and interventions and 300 medical guidelines.Medical research involves an infinite number of processes and stages to which they are repeated and analysed through systems in place to ensure that through human consumption under different medical symptoms, medication developed is safe and will provide the desired effect as proven in research taken place in medical studies during development. However, it has been reported that medication can cause harm to a patient in unfortunate circumstances. Trust goes a long way in the public health world and we instinctively rely on the knowledge that to what they prescribe to help our illness or injury is to the letter, correct and safe.The phrase medication errors refer to preventable events that normally lead to medications being used in an inappropriate manner. Examples of such errors include scenarios like: i) A physician is well aware that his/her patient is allergic to a certain medication but goes ahead and prescribes it anyway. ii) The medications a patient is taking are in contradiction to the new one a physician has prescribed without reading the package which may end up preventing the effectiveness of the others and in the worst case scenario, the combination may also result in injury. iii) A specific medicine can only be taken by individuals who are mobile or can walk but a physician prescribes to a patient who cannot even get out of bed (double amputee). iv) A pharmacy receives a prescription for a specific medicine but fills it up with another type of medicine. v) The pharmacy gives you the right type of medicine but ends up printing the wrong dosage directions for instance where a patient ends up taking medication 9 times instead of 3 times a day. An overdose can cause injury.

There are numerous examples when it comes to medical errors lists that make people feel the need to follow up medical errors made by NHS services with a claim against them. Many services in the health care industry can fail to prevent or cause the errors from nurses to physicians and pharmacists. The errors are a huge deal in the industry to the extent that the Medical Research Council spend years of testing and analysis in an attempt to create safe medication. A question that arises from this is how well is the NHS regulated to minimizing errors and unnecessary injuries or deaths? The answer to this is that it is challenging as improving patient safety is said to be at the forefront of delivering a quality NHS Service.What measures can be taken to prevent the medical errors?

  • Keeping an active record of all the medications a patient is taking. These should be written down and copies presented to physicians.
  • Research any allergies you may have with medicines. This way you will be able to know how to find out that you are allergic.
  • When you visit a pharmacist, make sure they know about all the medications you are taking.
  • Your family should be aware of the medication you are taking in the event of an emergency where you may not be able to use your voice.
  • Talk to your physician to know why he/she is prescribing each and every medication as this can help avoid trouble of going through NHS complaints.
  • Get to know the side effects of the medicine and keep a record in case it has ever been prescribed before. If you are unsure about a certain combination of drugs or dosage, do not guess but immediately contact your physician to be on the safe side.

    • While taking precautions is important, keep in mind that it is not your responsibility to prevent all the possible medical errors as it is the work of the healthcare provider. If they fail to do so, you can file for NHS claim with a NHS claim Specialist Tylers Solicitors.