“The pharmacy gave me the wrong medication, instead of getting well, I kept getting sicker and sicker, can I hold the pharmacy responsible for what they did to me?”

Hi, I’m Katelyn Holub, a personal injury attorney practicing law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss topics related to personal injury law.

Today’s question comes from a listener who would like to know their legal rights when a pharmacy dispenses the wrong medication, or the wrong dose, or provides medication to which the patient is flagged as being allergic. 

Over the years, our firm has helped numerous people who were harmed by improper fulfillments of prescription medication. 

In some instances, the totally wrong product is dispensed to a patient.  At other times, a pharmacy dispenses a medication that has an ingredient which is a known allergen to a patient, and the patient’s specific allergy has been noted by the pharmacist, yet the pharmacist ignores the noted allergy warning for the patient and dispenses a medication with that allergen in it anyway.  Still other times, an incorrect dosage is dispensed to a patient.

In each of these cases, it is important to carefully analyze whether a mistake is due to the pharmacy, or whether the mistake is due to a poorly written prescription. Or due to miscommunication between the physician and the pharmacist.

Since many communications between doctors and pharmacists are now electronic, medication dispensing mistakes are less frequently due to poorly handwritten prescription notes.

One of the key things to keep in mind in these types of situations is that a pharmacist has an obligation under the law to follow a doctor’s instructions in dispensing a prescription. If there is an allergy, or if there is a particular type of product that that the patient is allergic to, that restriction must be followed by the pharmacist, and if it isn’t followed, and the wrong drug is dispensed, or the wrong dosage amount of the correct drug is dispensed, the pharmacy can be held legally responsible.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you have questions about your legal rights if you get hurt due to the carelessness of another person, or as a result of substandard medical care, or due to a product defect, construction injury, or any other type of personal injury, please give us a call at (219) 736-9700. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at www.DavidHolubLaw.com – while there make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth”.