Avoiding Pharmacy Errors
From the article:
When pharmacists are asked to work long hours under grueling pressure, mistakes happen. And although many errors are minor, some of them can be extremely grave.
The pharmacist who made the mistake, investigators discovered, was at the end of a 12-hour shift — and a 60-hour work week.
More than 100,000 Americans die each year of adverse drug reactions, according to a landmark report in the Journal of the American Medical Association — making such reactions one of the six leading causes of death in the U.S. No one knows how many of those deaths are the result of errors in dispensing drugs, but observers say pharmacy mistakes may play a role. When researchers analyzed 9,846 prescriptions filled at a large hospital’s outpatient pharmacy in Springfield, New Jersey, for example, they found 1,371 mistakes, ranging from bottles containing the wrong pills or the wrong dosage to labeling errors. In other words, mistakes were made in roughly one in eight of the prescriptions.
If the white-coated pharmacist who fills your prescription looks harried, it’s no wonder. The conditions at many pharmacies are akin to sweat shops, analysts say. “In some retail locations, pharmacists are being asked to work 12-hour shifts, sometimes back to back,”
Long hours, no rest/meal breaks, fatigue, multi-tasking, uncontrolled interruptions.. and they wonder why mistakes happen ? AND.. BOP’s continue to state that they have no authority to over see work environment issues.. How do they even pretend to protect the public’s health and safety.. by .. taking that position..?
Filed under: General Problems
The sheer millions of Rx’s dispensed daily only complicate the arduous burden placed on the rushed pharmacist to check for irregularities or contradictory info to render a precarious sometimes incomplete or < good sound reason for allowing a dangerous script to go forward.