Chicago Medication Error Lawyer

If you or a loved one has been harmed by a medication dosing error, you may be able to get help dealing with the financial consequences. Medication errors are one of the most common types of medical malpractice, affecting at least 1.5 million Americans every year, and resulting in serious injury or even death.

Unlike some other types of medical malpractice, drug dosing is almost always a clear case of medical error, and may be compensated with a medical malpractice lawsuit. To learn more about your legal rights and options, please call 312-957-4166 today for a free initial consultation.

Prevalence of Drug Dosing Errors

Drug dosing errors occur when you or a loved one is given the wrong amount of a prescription medication. It seems like this should never happen, but it is a relatively common form of medical malpractice. A study of pediatric prescriptions for outpatients, for example, found that 15% of all prescriptions were given at the wrong dose. For small children (about 20 lbs or less), the wrong dose was given more than 33% of the time, and more than 1% of children received medication dosed at twice the recommended maximum dose.

Overall, drug dosing errors seem to account for about 20% of all medication errors, based on studies published in the Journal of Patient Safety and the journal Critical Care Medicine.

Causes of Medication Dosing Errors

Medication dosing errors are preventable, but they persist because they are caused by many different people in the prescription process. They can be caused by:

• Doctor prescribing the wrong dose
• Doctor writing the wrong dose
• Doctor writing the right dose, but it is read incorrectly (as in 1.0 mg read as 10 mg)
• Pharmacist or other dispenser selecting the wrong dose medication
• Medication given too frequently or not frequently enough based on metabolism

Sometimes these are the result of only one person’s error. Other times they are caused directly or indirectly by many people in a hospital system.