7,000 to 9,000 Americans Die Every Year From Prescription Medication Errors.
Are YOUR meds safe?
People are dying from treatments that are supposed make them well.
Mislabeling.
Incorrect dosing.
Deadly combinations.
There are endless reasons that a medication might contribute to or outright cause a ‘bad outcome’ for a patient, but the truth is most often it’s as simple as human error.
A simple mistake.
A faulty calculation on dose or frequency,
An inaccurate weight on a pediatric patient,
A new drug a distracted patient forgot to tell the doctor they’re taking,
A ‘look alike’ name that causes Versed to be pulled instead of vecuronium (and YES, my heart still aches every time I remember this case - for the nurse and the patient)
Oddly, despite the many causes for errors, the questions I hear from my patients boil down to only a few.
Here are the big ones:
Doesn’t my doctor check my meds?
If I don’t know what to look out for, how do I avoid getting hurt?
I often find it hard to know what I’m supposed to take & how, but it’s hard to get help. Who am I supposed to ask?
Prescription drugs are a big topic in the US, there’s an enormous human and financial cost, and ‘getting it right,’ matters a lot. What I’ve learned in my practice is that the answer to avoiding most of these drug-related issues, almost always involves the Pharmacist.
Pharmacists are super-educated, underutilized rockstars. You should pick their brains every chance you get.
The following is a short article by Dr. Ashley Kay Pendrick, board-certified pharmacist, that will change the way you currently think about the role of the pharmacist. She’s also included some tips on how you can utilize pharmacists to reduce the likelihood of medical errors throughout your care!
Tiffany 🚩
Never medical advice (of course) & NOT a paid partnership.
I have NO financial conflicts to declare!
Please enjoy this guest post.
What’s a pharmacist do, anyways?
We see it all the time, people like you, even PAs, nurse practitioners, and doctors are not sure about the expertise of today's pharmacist.
I get it.
Super understandable.
The main-stream image provided by the fast-food model, big-box stores and their outdated branding is to hand over a bottle of meds or “slap a label on it” for you or your sick family member.
Quite frankly, this has the world misguided.
Better outcomes ultimately lie in a pharmacist's hands on a daily basis.
The way a pharmacist thinks is just simply put, different.
The training we go through is treacherous. We come out doctors from the doctor of pharmacy program.
Everyone is trying to keep you safe…but you may still end up in the hospital due to medication errors, their side effects or their interactions.
A friend of mine recently had a GLP-1 agonist, Ozempic prescribed.
I know you know all about these guys.
They are EVERYWHERE - on ads, in your tea parties, talk shows… They’re the fancy drugs everyone is talking about for weight loss. This and it’s trend is a topic for a whole other debate.
So, my friend of course, with some time started shedding those pounds. Great, right!?
WELL… not so great, sometimes.
He also started having some major problems as well.
Exhausted
Light-headed
Dizzy all the time
It was causing him problems at work - a bit scary to think of him on the road driving - a car accident, a fall down the steep steps at his home, the list of ‘what if’s’ could keep going….
As a pharmacist, I took a gander over his meds, his vitals and recent labs. He was doing TOO good on his weight loss - eating crazy healthy now (woot woot!)
But…
My problem.
No, his problem.
Well… the BIG safety problem, actually, was
My friend was still on all his same blood pressure meds, and his blood pressure was starting to bottom out.
This happens all too often. The healthcare teams begin throwing more meds at folks not looking at the rest.
Should we stop other meds, lower these meds, adjust the times of day? Is there an interaction? For real here!? Is this med safe with any other disease you may have?
That’s the exact thing your pharmacists can solve for best.
The amount of hospital visits and death from medical errors is still insanely high.
Just Cali alone has 5 million errors a year still happening.
Not to mention 7,000 to 9,000 deaths occur every year in America from prescription medication errors.
Yeah, I’ll stop there for a moment.
Deaths.
Crazy right?!
And with the current trends of overburdened primary care and waits over two to three months to see endocrinology or cardiology, you need us more involved early to help to select safer medications and adjustment up front.
There are OVER 20,000 prescription medications.
That’s 20,000 opportunities to ask a pharmacist for help.
So what exactly should you do?
Help your care team and pharmacist give you the best care.
Keep them in the loop on your health, your meds, your symptoms. Provide a full list of every medicine, supplement you take and how you take each one to everyone on your care team.
When you get a new prescription, ask yourself (and your care team) these three questions:
What’s the goal of this medication for me?
What issues, if any, should I expect with this medication?
How well does this medication play with my others and with my current health conditions?
If you need a more in depth consultation you might want to consider establishing a relationship with a ‘consulting pharmacist.’ And in case you aren’t familiar with this term, let me help.
Consultant pharmacists come in all forms.
They can be generalists who help you manage your normal meds and talk with you when you get a new script or need adjustments to your current medications, specialists who manage certain conditions (like diabetes or hormone replacement) or specific populations (like kids with autism or cystic fibrosis).
To find a local consulting pharmacist, try googling ‘consulting pharmacist’ and the name of your town. There are also companies like mine, that offer online services where you pay a monthly subscription fee for access to help to keep you in the know about all your meds.
If you are a clinician running a clinical practice, chances are you’re missing a pharmacist on your team. You should know that adding a pharmacist helps lower the risk of errors, improves patient health and pays for itself through increased practice revenue - definitely worth considering!
Would love to engage further in the comments & please message me on LinkedIn if you need help finding a pharmacist that will meet your needs. I’d be happy to help!
Dr. Ashley Kay Pendrick is a board certified pharmacist, holistic practitioner and pharmacist advocate helping to connect physician offices with pharmacists for the sake of a safer and healthier America.
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Love this article, sharing.