When you pick up your prescription at the pharmacy, you must be sure to check that it's your medication, that you are receiving from the clerk. Check the outside of the paper bag and then check the type written label on the vial. Is your name correct? If the drug name correct? Is the dosage correct?
When you get home, open the vial. Do the tablets look like the diagram/picture on the insert you've received with your med?
Lastly, check the physician's name on the insert. Is this your physician?
An error that's creaping up in pharmacies is the insertion of the wrong MD into the patient's profile. Some clerks are putting in only the first initial of the prescribing MD. If there are numerous MD's with the same last name, you could easily have the wrong MD's name typed on your pharmacy record
TOGETHER with the wrong phone number for the MD.
If a drug question should arise for the pharmacist, he/she might never ever to able to contact your physician, should the above information on your pharmacy record be incorrect.
Errors in pharmacy practice tend to be replicated and moreover, variations on the principal error are introduced as each Rx is filled by the patient.
WARNING:
Check...check...check all medications you buy and you use.
if they knew how many errors are made in pharmacies, MDs offices, and hospitals. Part of a job of being a competent consumer of medical service, is doing a bit of detective work!
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