When dealing with medicine, you may assume that there are no inconsistencies when you visit the doctor and get your prescription.
Medication errors can lead to many health complications, including ones that can make it hard for you to work or drive. Learning about why errors happen can help you decide what steps to take next if you suffer from physical complications.
Reliance on verbal instructions
According to the National Library of Medicine, a doctor who gives verbal instructions may forget to talk about or give conflicting details about how you should take your medicine. These mistakes can lead to you receiving wrong information that can make you overdose or take a different medicine than you should.
Rushed visits
If an office does not have enough staff or your doctor cannot spend the proper amount of time alone with a patient, then prescription errors can happen. Your doctor may even struggle to properly communicate with nurses or other staff members, which can cause more preventable errors.
Mixed medications
Before taking a new medicine, your doctor should always check to make sure it does not mix in a dangerous way with another one you are taking. If they fail to do that, then you may begin to notice serious health problems when you take both of these medicines regularly.
Mistaken names
When getting a prescription, some drug names may seem very similar to other ones that treat completely different health issues. If your doctor writes down a name with sloppy or hard-to-read handwriting, then you could get the wrong prescription filled and receive the wrong medicine.
Once you learn more about common prescription errors, you can help protect yourself against these kinds of problems.
