A customer/patient comes to you and complains that his/her prescription was filled incorrectly? As a pharmacist, how do you respond to that? Obviously it shouldn't happen, but it does, and it really freaks me out that a person's mistake can serisously harm someone or even kill them. I know it will come up eventually, so if it's happened to you, how did you react?
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What do you do if....
Started by OasisDwlr
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A couple weeks ago, a woman came in with two prescriptions for methylphenidate for each one of her two daughters. As an intern, I accidentally switched the strengths (incorrectly gave one 5mg and the other 10mg) and the mistake was missed by my pharmacist. So the woman discovers the mistake before giving her daughters their dose and returns to the pharmacy screaming at us for putting her children at risk for an overdose. Man, I felt like crap. So what do you do? Verify the mistake, refund their money, apologize your ass off, and hope they dont sue. It is my understanding that if there are no damages, like in this case, then they have no grounds to take you to court. Is this true?
According to Florida law you couldn't be sued based on Criminal liability (because you did not intend to harm the children..intent is the key word) you also wouldn't be civily liable because you did not harm them since it was caught before hand. Unless there were significant damages, most courts would throw out the case.
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Well, on the bright side, you were only putting one of her children at risk for overdose, so if she accused you of putting both of them at risk, you could throw that back in her face.
But seriously, yeah, you verify if a mistake has been made or if she was mistaken or the script was wrong, and if so apologize, correct the mistake and refund their money, review what happened, and decide the best way of helping to prevent a mistake like that from happening again. You can't make excuses for it...you have to take the responsibility for it.
You're assuming this...they might have really pissed him/her off.
