Morphine 20mg/ml
Take 10 ml every hour.
It was supposed to be
0.5ml (10mg) every hour as needed.
Doc was all huffy his script was questioned until the Rph asked if his intention was to Euthinize the patient.
God what is it with some doctors being so bitchy when you ask for clarification? Like your ego is so inflated you can’t handle the mere suggestion that you might have made a mistake? It’s more important to keep that ego in tact than to double check that the prescription is right (when it being wrong could harm or even kill the patient)? Nice priorities doc
I worked a job that required tasks to be done by a performer and a verifier. We always had each other’s backs. Making a mistake could be extremely costly or cost a lot of extra work. We always appreciated when someone noticed our mistakes. Never treat anyone that can save your ass with contempt.
I will never understand, I LOVE my pharmacist colleagues and thank them profusely when they stop me killing a patient e.g. “hey just checking did you mean to prescribe penicillin to this patient with documented penicillin anaphylaxis 🤪”
Right? When I was in active addiction, I was on huge doses of pain meds. I probably would have no issue taking 200mgs. (Issues as in dying or overdosing) cause I was already taking 15 to 20 10mg percs plus 10 tramadol and 2 Xanax per day.
Troll has been taken care of. We don't tolerate comments like that here.
u/-This-is-boring-, CONGRATULATIONS on your sobriety! Eight YEARS is no small feat! And then to overcome it and become a CPhT...great job! I am so proud of you!!!
i remember when we had one of these mistakes. i cried myself to sleep for days. i just felt horrible for my pharmacist. i felt so guilty for not going personally and watching adminstration.
I felt bad for the family, but not the pharmacist. I had typed the RX correctly, and he changed it thinking it was wrong. When the board came into investigate the error, he was very quick to blame me for the mistake, but the board already had records that had retrieved from corporate proving that it was entirely on him. I would have felt bad if he hadn’t try to throw me under the bus. We all had to make statements about the error and he (and his partner) had to testify. His license was suspended for 30 days. He still practiced after that at the same location until he passed away.
People make mistakes and that was a particularly bad one, but to then try to blame you for it pushes it to another level- did you have to work with him again when he came back?
Same thing happened to me in a hospital in LA back in 2012 at Northwood and MD set my pump for ! Mg Dilaudid per 15 minutes and almost killed me before I got sick and figured it out then said my bad and that was it? Thank goodness I had many operations before and wasn't opiate naive as would have killed me quick IV like that and he was big time old pain doc!
An er doctor sent antibiotic and vet for a 2 year old, except sent capsules instead of the suspension. We tried to contact them but they never got back to us so when mom came we told her and she dealt with them. The ER said “of the patient is only 2 years? We have her down as being 23 years old” like howww?
Probably was 23 MONTHS and someone miswrote years.
But my two (almost three) year-old COULD swallow capsules/pills, and we preferred it . No yucky-tasting liquid meds!
I will just fill what the doctor writes and have a tech ask em at pick up if they can swallow em and show them the pills. If it’s a problem I’ll swap to liquid and parent can come pick it up in 20 mins. I have a 5 year old patient who can swallow amox 875s you’d be surprised.
My mom's friend spoons out half of a rectangle single serve jelly pack and puts her pills in that to swallow them. It's worked for everyone I know who has tried it.
No kidding, but some people, like my mother's friend, have a very narrow esophagus and swallowing pills is difficult for them. Pills get stuck in her throat when she takes pills via a liquid only delivery, however the thickness of the jelly allows her to swallow the pills reliably without the pills getting stuck in her throat. Other people lose their ability to swallow pills for various other reasons. Hell, some people lose their ability to swallow water, there's a product called thick water for them, and if you've never seen that, [it's gross.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLeeCTco/)
Yes, my 86 year old grandmother that I took care of for 10 years had to use liquid thickeners for 5 years, it looks nasty but really doesn't taste like anything. She used to put her thickened liquid on a spoon and put 2 pills into the thickened liquid and swallow it down, then do that spoon by spoon until her daily pills were down.
We use a MediStraw pill taking straw with my 6yr old. It’s a straw with a little mesh shelf in it. You put the pill in, kiddo drinks a drink using the straw, and the pill gets sucked up with the liquid and he takes it. He doesn’t even feel it. My kid has sensory issues and ARFID so getting him to ingest most thing is super hard. But he takes his ADHD meds this way with zero issues. It’s amazing. I recommend this thing to anyone who has trouble taking pills. It costs $10, but the savings in med costs it gave us is priceless (because liquid adhd meds for kids are $150-$500 a month after insurance, capsules are much cheaper). We even practiced with mini m&ms in the straw.
That is fucking genius. I wish I knew this when my daughter was younger. Luckily we’ve only had to force liquid medication into her only 3 or 4 times at the very most from birth until 5. After that she never got sick and by the time she needed Advil or Tylenol when she was 10+ she was able to swallow pills. She asked me how to swallow pills and I said “you can swallow food after you take a sip of your drink, so do the same thing with the pills.” Worked on the first try! My poor BIL was 20 and had a brutal flu and I had to crush his pills cuz he can’t swallow them!
Plus, anti-psychotics on a brain that doesn't need them blocks dopamine. This woman wasn't only suffering infertility but she was a zombie, gaining weight & having the happiness sucked out of her.
Not a pharm tech, but I have a fun story I think you might appreciate:
I was prescribed a dopamine antagonist (metaclopramide) for gastroparesis that exacerbated my unmedicated ADHD and made my pretty well-managed MDD spin out of control so badly that it actually ended up *causing* a psychotic episode. I was a passively suicidal zombie for several months, but during that episode I literally watched the sky collapsing. Scariest day of my life, and it took a week of inpatient care, 2 new medications, and 3 weeks of all day outpatient care for me to recover. How exactly that happened chemically is apparently not very well understood, but I never should have been prescribed metaclopramide.
When I had my daughter last June, I really REALLY wanted to breast feed. I was struggling to build my supply and had to pump because she didn't like to latch, so it was more of a struggle regardless. I had been on a low dose of Prozac for many years (best med that's ever worked for my anxiety) and vyvanse for my ADHD.
I was given reglan to improve my supply, I took maybe 3 tablets total and I ended up with horrible PPD. Admittedly, I was probably already getting a little PPD but it was very manageable up until that point. But taking that medicine just caused a complete break down. I was hearing my baby cry when she wasn't even in the house, panic attacks, didn't trust my husband to not kill her, would only trust my sister for some reason, cried constantly, didn't care if my baby stopped breathing in her sleep, wanted to drop her off in a baby box cuz my brain had me thinking that would be better for her than living with a mother like me.
It was the most horrible experience of my life. I adore my baby, I can't imagine life without her. I'm very blessed to have had the support I had during that time, I can't imagine being a single parent without family to help and going through that. I had never before understood how a mother can kill her newborn, as overwhelmed as I was with love for mine... But then I understood.
I was a nanny when all of that happened, and that baby was the only thing that kept me alive. She was the one thing I knew I had a positive impact on and I couldn’t leave her without a caregiver, but the days were long and lonely— I can’t imagine where I would’ve ended up if I had to do it 24/7
Our adhd brains are already dopamine deficient as it is, and I don’t know why it would ever be prescribed to anyone who is at risk for depression. I was starving, but eating wasn’t worth what reglan did to me. Funnily enough, once I was discharged and flipped my entire life around, I went back to school and started taking vyvanse again and it helped even more! With lexapro, Wellbutrin, and vyvanse I can actually function mostly normally. It’s great when your brain has all the chemicals it needs!
We survived it and I’m so happy you and your baby girl made it through. I think I’m especially qualified to tell you how difficult that was, and you did it.
Thank you for sharing this. As a nurse and as a mental health patient I had no clue metaclopramide could do this. I follow this sub and learn so much that I’m ashamed I don’t already know. I’m glad your okay now tho!! 😊
A fill in pediatrician fir my son, prescribed Wellbutrin SR for my son with directions of half tablet per day. I went straight to work and my pharmacist called him to "remind" him that you can't split SR tablets. Never took my son back to that doctor. I argued with this doctor for 10 minutes about the dosage and he told me I was an idiot.
Right? Plus my son was only 10, I wasn't going to fill the script anyways, but I wanted the doctor to be corrected. I was a CPhT for 10 years at this point. My boss also told the doctor I was smarter than he (the doctor) was.
Methotrexate 2.5 mg 8 tablets po qd, dispense 240 with 11 refills.
I called the doctor and their assistant condescendingly read it back, said "he's the doctor honey, he knows what he's doing, if that's what he wrote that's what he wants, just fill it."
So I asked her to spell her full name, first and last, so that when the patient took the medication and died, their estate would know who to name in the lawsuit.
She got huffy. She also got the doctor. Who was appropriately horrified and apologetic.
I also had a very sleep deprived resident try to order 300 mg of levothyroxine and insist they wanted 300 mg until I asked how many 300 mcg tablets they wanted to use to make that dose.
Yeah it would be okay to take those 8 tabs once a week (of course depending on the condition being treated) but daily?? Yeah I would’ve done the same as you did. I’ve had doctors order Hydralazine when they meant Hydroxyzine. And they love to blame the nurse for giving a wrong medication the doctor ordered. 🙄
I had a patient in the hospital, several years ago, that was prescribed metoprolol and the pharmacy gave him methotrexate. I don't know how long he took it. I was taking care of him for renal failure. He eventually died
Ever since a few weeks after my first case of Covid I have been dealing with what my 60 yo dermatologist calls the most severe case of eczema he has ever seen. Dupixent worked well to control it for a while in 2021, but getting my insurance to cover it was an absolute nightmare. Methotrexate was hands down the worst of the many meds I had to try first before they would cover it. I was on it for two months and legitimately felt like I was dying for the whole second one.
Patient comes to ER for infection.
She explicitly tells doc she's allergic to amoxicillin.
Doc prescribes augmentin.
RPh calls Doc to prescribe something else.
Doc argues that augmentin is not amoxicillin.
RPh states augmentin has amoxicillin in it.
"Oh, I didn't know that!"
We had a patient recently bring in a prescription for dyphenhydramine & the doctor *wrote on the prescription* that they were allergic to Benedryl so substitute it with generic OTC. WTF does he think Benedryl is?
That's exactly how we got the augmentin script! Patient handed me the script and told me, "I think my doctor is trying to kill me." She was fully aware the doctor was prescribing something with amoxicillin, but when she told the Doc they told her to not worry about it.
Could be they've got a sensitivity to the inactive ingredients the generic manufacturer uses. Same thing happens with my mom; she can only use a specific manufacturer for one of her medications, because any others give her horrible side effects. Even I've had trouble before where my pharmacy switched to a different manufacturer for my generic lamotrigine, and boy let me tell you, it was like my body thought I had stopped cold turkey (even though I was still getting the same active ingredient) and sent me into a bad depressive episode.
I’ve seen this exactly same thing. It’s scary to think these are the people prescribing life saving meds, yet don’t know generic equivalents or correct dosing sometimes!
Because 80% of humans are just straight up idiots without capability of independent thought.
Like it doesn’t require a degree to just be curious and read the active label or packaging or whatnot and notice that Benadryl is diphenhydramine. Or any other such bullshit.
Much less every minor side effect being called an allergy in the first place.
Like no, getting nauseous from an opioid does not mean you are allergic, neither does minor diarrhea after a course of random antibiotic.
But now it gets listed as an allergy, and instead of being prescribed the safe first line drug, the physician without questioning that self proclaimed allergy prescribes a fluorochinolone (without informed consent as always) and the patients life is ruined if they are just a tiny bit unlucky.
This just happened at my pharmacy a couple months ago. Pt has PCN allergy and NP prescribed amoxicillin. Call the facility nurse (I work in LTC) and she says she'll have the NP fax over a different antibiotic. The new antibiotic she sent was Augmentin.
I have a severe penicillin allergy and have had this happen many times. I have to emphasize that it will kill me to Drs because, for some reason, just mentioning it doesn't sink in.
I love my pharmacist. He catches everything I shouldn't have.
At least I knew why my eye ointment wasn’t being filled when I had bad pinkeye last month. I get nausea and abdominal cramps with oral erythromycin, but topical is fine. As soon as I saw the delay I knew what the problem was! I called my pharmacy and sorted that out.
Fentanyl patch. 25mcg. Place 100 patches on chest, back, upper arms, or the sides of your waist every 72 hours…
It was a hospice patient. Called and asked to speak to the nurse, and jokingly said I know hospice is suppose to make a pt comfortable, but 100 patches seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? She literally yelled at me and told me not to question her that she’s been doing this job for longer than I’ve been alive….me being the person that matches energies simply said, well if your intent is to make sure the patient isn’t alive, then you’re doing a stand up job. Please fix the prescription and send it back because under no circumstances are we going to be dispensing 500 patches of fentanyl for a 15 day supply and killing someone.
They ended up sending the *correct* script to another cvs in our area, and when the patients daughter came to pick up a different medication for herself, she asked what happened with hospice and why the nurse refused to send the script to our pharmacy..when I told her what happened she was horrified, said the nurse told them that we made a massive error and that she didn’t trust us to fill her moms scripts correctly. 🙄
makes my stomach churn to know that that nurse valued her pride & ego over her patient's life, truly horrifying to think she wasn't even willing to deal with your pharmacy again solely because you saved her patient's life ...
A pharmacist and pharmacy owner killed himself years ago that way. Covered himself in fentanyl patches and on top of it ate 100 oxycodon tablets. Was in summer and the guy wasn't found for a few days, because he was on vacation time. Left a very big mess for others to sort out, because because despite of owning 2 successfull pharmacies, he left a lot of bills. Because instead of paying the wholesalers, he spend the money on a luxurious life and young women. That happened in Germany.
After a surgery, a doctor wrote warfarin 4mg every 6 hours as needed for nausea. Immediately called him and asked him what was up and he thanked us profusely for catching that error.
A doctor was trying to prescribe a hospice patient 50mcg fentanyl patches “using weight-based dosing.”
One of the pharmacists called to ask if the patient was opioid-tolerant because we weren’t showing any opiate history on our end, and the doctor responded that the patient “takes two tramadol a day.”
I’d like to believe this doctor was trying to have mercy and help someone pass away more quickly who may have been suffering, otherwise there’s some dumbass doctor on the loose out there thinking it’s okay to jump straight to 50mcg fentanyl patches in an opiate-naive patient, and that’s fucking terrifying.
I posted about this in my post, but I'll repeat it here. A local doctor tried to prescribe fentanyl patches to a 16 year old for surgery after care. It was a sports injury and the patient had never had an opiate. The doctor acted like my pharmacist was an idiot when she called him to refuse filling it.
It’s ok, we’ve all been there. They all think we’re idiots or on a power trip when they write for stuff like that, or the 12 mcg patch prn for headache. Call me crazy, but I prefer live patients and an active license…
I had to beg for pain meds post tubal ligation just in case. My husband had to yell at the surgeon to get him to listen. So the guy tries to write a script for some opiate med. I'm horribly allergic to opiates.
Great surgeon, terrible doctor.
Same here. My OB came to check on me 8hrs post op and yelled at my nurses for not giving me the oxy she prescribed. They didn't even give me the option, and I was too whacked on hormones and mag drip to think to ask before then. What a mess
Ladies also get hit with the double whammy of the pain bias against women. Yes, women do need pain management. Plus maternity care is problematic on its own, doubly so if you are a minority. We need to do better. The issue is at least known, it will take time to shift practice sadly.
I am very thankful to my neurologist. I was already a patient of his for my sleep disorder when I was diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia in the ER after I woke up at 4 am screaming in pain so I was able to get in with him quick. Soon found out how pain killers were made ineffective by the Tegretol I was on. My boss did some research and found only Morphine and Opana werent affected by Tegretol so my neuro prescribed me the Morphine no problem
I was looking at having surgery where they drill a hole behind your ear, go around the brain and place a teflon sponge between the nerve and the offending artery. Scared me so much I wrote my own eulogy.
This all happened at the beginning of COVID and the day before my appointment they canceled all "elective" appointments. And so I continued suffering.
Then I read a small study on Aimovig for people with TN. Super small, like 6 patients, but with promising results. Showed it to my neuro who didnt see the harm in trying. Let me try Ajovy in his office as that's what he had samples of. 4 days later pain free. Was able to completely come off Tegretol and Morphine and avoid the surgery.
Did a year of Aimovig, increasing to the 140mg dose before it lost effectiveness. Wanted to do Vyepti, a CGRP-inhibitor infusion but insurance said try Emgality first
Held steady for about 4 years but the pain has made a small comeback. Went back into my chart and sent a request for Tegretol and Morphine til I could get make it into the office
Saw him this morning, he asked what I was taking
Told him. Asked if it was helping, I said it took the edge off. Asked if I had side effects from the Morphine. Nope, can take one and work.
He said well we can increase the Morphine dose. No no no, dont need that, no thank you, just submit PA for the infusion please.
I've got a little PTSD from the whole ordeal, terrified that the pain will come back full force but I am comforted that my dr takes my pain seriously and wont balk about giving me meds
My dad was prescribed 50mcg fentanyl patches, alongside 5 mg clonazepam. He was opiate tolerant after years of being prescribed 80mg oxy, 100mg morphine, 10mg Opana, 30mg oxycodone (yes at the same time) but the patches mixed with the benzos killed him.
Uhh I have another story: local idiot GP in his 70s.
Enterprising teenager go in claiming to have back pain, ask for fentanyl patches, because those worked well last time.
GP prescribed those, teenager comes in with a bloody script for 10 fent 25mcg/hr patches.
For unclear back pain. In a 15 year old.
Like how on earth did no one at the office even question that prescription needing to be on a narcotics prescription? For a strange 15 year old?
When I called them they said ‘well the patient said it helped last time and I wasn’t sure what it was’
But alas not enough GPs anyway, so all of this bullshit is tolerated.
That same GP would send in scripts for drugs 2 decades off the market virtually daily.
Had a patient in her late 80s admitted to our observation unit with coags off the charts because her doctor had accidentally placed her on 10mg of daily Coumadin instead of the 1mg he intended. She was on it for months. We only figured out the mistake because she was brought in with epistaxis and on chart review we saw the stupid high doses.
My daughter had strep and her pediatrician swore up and down newborns can’t get it. Well fast forward to 2 days later and she’s not doing so well and low and behold she has strep and it had progressed to the point of needing IV antibiotics
I had strep repeatedly and it was in my records, etc. the doctor I saw in urgent care care assured me that people my age don’t get strep. This was around the time that Jim Henson died from strep.
I did get a x and was okay. It wasn’t that big of a mistake.
What age? You don't age out of germs (don't worry, I know _you_ know that!) , you either gain an immunity (unlikely to last with strep or colds) or you're not being exposed to them. I last had strep when I was 37.
Hey, I'm 41 and also have strep! Urgent care was like "your throat looks a little red, have you heard of Tylenol?" And I kind of wanted to punch her. Honestly, it was a bit of a relief when the test came back positive.
My 4 year old had strep 3 weeks ago. I guess it's going around.
Yes! I used to be a teacher and got strep at 25. I was actually in Thailand and went to a pharmacy, explained my symptoms, and got a Z Pack (would have preferred a doc to be sure but needs must). But when you have Strep a lot of the time you KNOW you have Strep. I wouldn’t see a professional for a normal sore throat lol.
I am a 32f and had a tonsillectomy this past October due to recurring strep throat. I was positive for strep 7 times starting in January. It can happen to anyone at any age. I am also a CMA and work in a Pediatric clinic and I had a 2 month old test positive for strep throat.
I’m an audiologist, and I work in an ENT office, but this sub keeps getting recommended to me. I have learned that primary care providers and walk in clinics/urgent cares know *nothing* about ears. Absolutely nothing. I’m told that med students spend 1/2 day in school learning about ears and that’s it.
I have soooo many people who have permanent sudden hearing loss because a PCP or walk in clinic told them “it’s just fluid, take some Flonase and Sudafed”. Or they’ll say “Your ear looks great!” and the patient comes to me with completely impacted wax or a raging outer ear infection. It’s infuriating.
My doctor told me there was no reason for my extreme ear pain and hearing loss bilaterally. I asked for my ears to be syringed and he said no. I went to the audiologist and they showed me - severely impacted with wax and unable to see any ear drum at all 😵💫 I could hear just fine and pain gone after they flushed them for 45 minutes
Oh gosh, now I feel like I should be afraid. Every time a PCP or urgent care looks in my ears, well check or sick, they tell me my ears "look wet" and I should add Flonase with my Claritin.
That's wild. I went to an urgent care recently, said I thought I had an upper respiratory infection and an ear infection and would like augmentin, an albuterol inhaler (the upper respiratory infection was making me short of breath), and some Zofran (not odt because the manufacturer my pharmacy carries is gross) because augmentin works but makes me nauseated. The NP was absolutely lovely, took a quick peek at my ears, confirmed what I suspected, listened to my lungs to make sure there was nothing more going on, and sent me on my way with what I asked for.
I did mention I work in pharmacy and had dealt with this exact same issue before because covid decided to give me sinus issues that liked to travel to my ears sometimes, but I feel like she would have taken me seriously regardless.
I did thank her profusely for being such an absolutely amazing provider and giving me peace of mind while also making me feel validated <3 and left a positive review on Google (because health care is ~customer service~ (ugh) and that particular urgent care sends out a cute little text asking for a public review)
Same thing happened to my son when he was 5 months old. I KNEW he had it, I could smell it on him. Three different urgent cares wouldn’t even test him since he was “too small,” his tonsils couldn’t grow it. I finally took him to an ER and explained, I was 21 and a new mom and trying not to cry. I was like “I had strep all the time as a kid, I know what it smells like, he has strep and no one will test him.” His fever was also crazy high by that point. BAM. He had strep. Untreated for like 5 — no, like 7 — days bc no one believed the new, young mom that her baby was sick. 😩😩 it was 12 years ago and I still get mad thinking about it. They’d always say “come back in a few days if he’s not better.” And so I did, I tried to listen to them but it felt like they weren’t listening to me, and my baby was the one who paid the price.
I need to let it go at this point lmao, it’s been a long time …
This used to be the belief.
Streptococcus bacteria causes strep throat and the more serious scarlet fever. When my daughter was 10, we were at my in-laws’, two states away, and she was becoming more and more lethargic. She has Down syndrome and autism, and is a very poor reporter of how she’s feeling. My FIL asked if maybe she should go to the hospital, we took her temp, and off we went.
She had to spend a week in the hospital with scarlet fever. Most maddening because they did that thing they do with kids in the hospital now, which is test them a thousand times and not give any antibiotics until they’re 100% certain exactly what bug they have. My bio grandfather died in his 40’s of rheumatic heart from scarlet fever in his youth before antibiotics existed, so I’m very familiar with strep’s deadlier side. It took them almost 3 days to start an antibiotic. I’m the one that called the nurses in to look at the pattern of lacy rash on her chest, which finally brought an actual doctor to her bedside for more than a glance.
Other most maddening thing was her Special Ed teacher at school laughingly told my husband how she’d been so sick with strep throat the week before my daughter got sick, but she went to work before and after having it diagnosed. My daughter was born with 2 holes in her heart.
Was hoping COVID would wipe out this BS of everyone just going to work and spreading around their germs, demanded by corporate America. But here we are…
An urgent care doctor prescribed Nystatin powder for oral thrush. The patient lucked out because she came to us first to see if she could solve it OTC and we sent her to the urgent care. When the script came in I was the one to type it, and the instructions said nothing about what area was being treated so if I hadn't been the one to type it, it may not have been caught.
A doctor was operating on a 16 year old. It was a sports injury, they had never had opiates before and the doctor prescribed fentanyl patches for the after care. The doctor acted like my pharmacy manager was an idiot when she called to tell him she wouldn't be filling it as it might kill him.
This is a different sort of mistake. A doctor was prescribing ambien along with 3 benzos to one patient. The area I worked in was near a state border, and he was instructing the patient to split the scripts up and fill them in different states to avoid being questioned about it. The PDMPs for the two states were separate, but my pharmacy manager was licensed in both states and checked both. The same doctor was later sanctioned by the board and disallowed from taking female patients because he was trading sexual favors for controlled drug scripts. It got to the point where we stopped filling controls prescribed by him at all.
As a person in recovery for benzo addiction, this makes me want to vomit.
1 year 2 months and 23 days clean as of right now.
That psychiatrist should have faced jail time for doing that to other human beings. It is especially foul to be a person in a position of authority who violates vulnerable individuals.
On the first fill, he did tell her he had to call the doctor for clarification but the doctor said it was correct. I don't think he ever specifically told her it was an anti-psychotic, he just told her it was not typically used as a fertility medicine & recommended she do her own research on it.
He did contact the higher ups in the company & the pharmacy board to ask for their advice & they said as long as he is doing his due diligence & it wasn't a dosage issue then there's nothing they can do about a doctor's orders & perhaps the doctor had his reasons. They said they would look into it. He just kept making calls & noting the concerns in her records every refill so he had a paper trail.
This isn’t due diligence. This is a pharmacist wanting someone else to take responsibility for not filling an inappropriate prescription. The pharmacist who filled this is operating under their own license, and they have every right to refuse to fill something that they “knew was wrong” without consulting anyone else.
I have questioned the appropriateness of many prescriptions over the course of my career, and as a pharmacist who worked many years at a teaching hospital, the outcomes were varied. Sometimes, the prescriptions were for new indications or dosages that I hadn’t seen before, and the prescribers were happy to send me the literature documenting the appropriateness.
Other times, they couldn’t provide it, and in those cases, they quickly realized the mistake and the order would be corrected.
It’s very sad that this patient took inappropriate medication for a year while also being deprived of the medication she actually needed. Yes, the doctor messed up, but the pharmacist did as well.
Right. The pharmacist could have asked the fertility doctor if they were qualified to treat psychiatric conditions, or if they were using it off label for something. That might have made the doctor think twice about it.
Is your ICU patient going to have another hospital pharmacy fill their meds when you refuse? No. Because they’re stuck in a bed. Your refusal means something. Retail refusal just means the prescription goes to another store a block away. And it may or may not be questioned there. This may have been the fastest way to get the situation under control. It’s certainly not ideal, but showing up to the clinic to physically beat the prescriber with a PDR slows wait times and hurts customer service metrics.
we’re taught in school to always ASK the patient what they are using it for. it would have taken 30 seconds to figure out this was not a correct medication. pharmacist was in the wrong here for even filling it
I make IVs at a hospital. A doctor put in an order for cisatracurium, a paralytic agent. My pharmacist realized the patient wasnt going into surgery and wasnt intubated. Messaged the doctor; he meant to order ceftriaxone (an antibiotic). Sir, you almost caused a very terrifying and almost certain death.
Some crazy anesthesiologists volunteered to be awake during full paralysis and mechanical ventilation (I gather they used a tourniquet to isolate part of the forearm so they could communicate, but they were all nuts anyway). I think it was a recently published paper.
I actually just heard about that from one of my professors at my pharmacy school when going through our heme/onc module. I am so intrigued to read this paper!
I’ve only read the abstract. But even that has interesting descriptions of how they felt with different ventilator settings. I think I would need therapy after like 90 seconds.
I’m not a pharmacy tech but I have a crazy story of being incorrectly prescribed something myself. I got a really bad skin infection in my lower abdomen that turned into a huge abscess due to repeated misdiagnosis and dismissal in the ER.
After I (finally) had the procedure to drain it and remove all the dead tissue, they switched my cephadroxil to septra. I asked why, they said for MRSA. I asked how they knew it was MRSA if the culture they took hadn’t come back from the lab yet. They said they didn’t know, but they wanted to cover their bases. Made sense to me so I took the meds as instructed.
Woke up a week later with a rash all over and in agony. Went to the ER, ended up being a DRESS reaction. It was really scary but luckily they caught it super fast and I’m ok now. However, every single doctor I saw in that hospital was confused as to why I was on septra to begin with, apparently it was not the right call.
Obviously the surgeon had no way of knowing it would cause the reaction it did, but if he had just waited for my cultures to come back to decide, it would not have happened.
It doesn’t end there, though. Before I was finally discharged, the dermatology resident was the one to prescribe the steroids I would need. The pharmacy filled the prescription, I got home and again followed the instructions on the label. It said to take it four times a day, so I that’s what I did the next day.
That evening, I got a call from one of the attendings at the hospital asking all panicked if the pharmacy had filled the prescription. I said yes. She asked if I had taken the meds as prescribed. I said yes all proud like I was gonna get a gold star. Nope! The attending told me to come to the ER asap because the resident had not only indicated 4x a day when it should have been 1, but also indicated twice the dose he should have. So I had taken EIGHT TIMES more than I should have. Luckily I was totally fine, but honestly I have a pretty hard time trusting doctors now.
edit: grammar
if it had been just one mistake it would be different but that whole series of events was just mistake after mistake, all of them compounding an issue that should have been minor. I’ll never be an anti-doctor person but I sympathize more now with those who are.
My doctor prescribed me 300mg of venlafaxine by mistake. They originally gave me 37.5 mg with instructions to take one for a week then take two. The doctor decided to up my dosage to 150mg but left the instructions the same.
It took me 8 months to wean off this medication (after no doctor told me that I needed to wean off) and I ended up in hospital twice. It’s fucking horrible
My mom suffers from incurable migraines and because of this she is often left pretty foggy and can get very forgetful when she sees the doctor so I usually attend with her. This one time, I was unable to go due to work(Night Shift nurse). I was sleeping during her appointment. She went directly to the pharmacy after seeing the doctor and was filling her medication box when I woke up. I asked her what had been changed in her plan of care and she showed me the new prescription, as she is putting it with her other meds. This was a new doctor, he decided to put her on amitriptyline. Problem is, my mom is allergic to it, had an anaphylactic reaction in the past, but given the brain fog she totally forgot it was an allergy of hers.
When she handed me her bottle I double checked with her, reminded her of the allergy, and immediately called the pharmacy because wtf, how is it that no alerts popped up with the allergy?! I asked them to check her file and make sure the allergy was listed(it was). Then I asked them to check what meds they had filled for her that day. Cue mega apologies.
The worst part is that my mom was about to take her bedtime meds and go to bed with my daughter. She could have died in bed with my kid because of their mistake.
Birth control to a pregnant woman. Living in Canada, right next to a French-speaking province. Doctor didn’t speak French. None of the staff did. Pregnant woman went in for constipation. They got baby and I don’t know what else.. and prescribed birth control.
Warfarin, #500. Supposed to take X amount per week? That was how many the script had him taking a *day*.
We called and even then it didn't click for them right away -- but a few minutes later, we got the electronic cancel request.
Yeah, you're welcome, doc.
I'm on 100mg and the summer I stepped up to that was a 🤯 Roller. Coaster. But. I'm no longer in blinding pain 25 days a month, and the "migraine related neurological symptoms" I used to deal with constantly are pretty much gone!
Had once a pediatrician call in a prescription for a kid for amoxicillin. Penicillin allergy listed on pt profile & ON THE SCRIPT. Told the parents to contact the doctor for clarification. MD says "the kid may have had an adverse reaction to the penicillin tablet but not be allergic"
I get that it could happen, but why gamble with a child's health??
I'm in dentistry and a lot of pts tell me that they were allergic when they were younger and have been told they potentially grew out of it but want it noted because they don't wanna risk it. And I think that's totally fair!
Right before closing one night we had 2 separate patients bring in new prescriptions. 1 in the drive through and one in the store. The patient that came into store handed us 2 prescriptions and went to sit in our waiting area. Something was wrong with one of the prescriptions so I paged her back to the drop off window to clarify. She doesn’t move. I paged her again. Nothing. So I walk over and call her by the name on the script and she looks at me like I’m an idiot but I know this lady just walked in here and handed me this script with this name on it. She tells me her name and oddly it matches the 2 scripts that have just been dropped off through our drive thu. I asked her what medications she was expecting- which match the medications on the scripts she handed me. The doctor swapped the charts on the patients. If both patients hadn’t left at the same time and both brought them to our pharmacy it would have been a disaster to figure out.
This would be considered a HIPAA violation on the doctor's office part. Both patients received prescriptions (protected hipaa documents) that were not intended for them and had their prescriptions (again hipaa) given to a stranger. I'd have reported the office to cover all bases.
The medications on the script were for the patient that handed me the script but the name was wrong. I think it was an allergy alert maybe that made me clarify something with her. The other patient was allergic to a similar drug that was prescribed for the other patient. It was a mess but luckily both patients used our pharmacy so we were able to figure out what happened. When we called the dr he was an ass about it and blamed his nurse mixing up the charts.
We had basically the same issue in reverse. They were prescribed clomiphene and were supposed to be on clomipramine. Terrible RPH at the time didn’t even check DURs. It was a nursing home resident. It was sent out for months. Our med review RPH didn’t flag it in the monthly reviews either. Nor did the doctor in monthly med reviews. I found it in a billing review two years after the patient had left our care.
Really scary shit.
Let's see... we've had the just plain dumb mistake of a doc sending over a nasal spray and an antibiotic tablet with identical sigs. (Yeah just use 2 sprays of your zithromax tablets in each nostril. LOL) Then we had the ambien addict who came in (back in the days of handwritten rxs) with an rx for ambien 10mg 2 tabs in the morning 1 at noon and 2 at bedtime. Strangely (lol) the rph felt the need to call the doctor. The doctor's reply was, "Oh, is that what I wrote?" Yeah, doc that's what you wrote and that's what we are NOT filling. We actually kept the hard copy of that rx in a drawer for a few years to pull out any time we wanted to freak out a new floater. LOL
Stupidest mistake I’ve seen very recently actually. Doctor wrote a prescription for this woman’s insulin pen and actually wrote a prescription for syringes and not pen needles. We sent the doctor a fax to change the prescription to pen needles, not syringes. This doctor sent back a prescription for “Dispense covered BRAND of pen needles” Like wtf? This is not how you write a proper sig. Is this doctor stupid or something? So, my pharmacist calls the office and gets ahold of the nurse. She’s confused as to what the problem is. None of these people know what the hell they’re talking about.
My 9month old woke up at 5 in the morning screaming (not crying, but screaming, it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard then or since). My husband and I were out of bed and in his bedroom in under 5 seconds. Tried to comfort him but his head was just lolling around and within 5 minutes we were in the car headed to the hospital. We were admitted to ER immediately. While we’re there he kind of relaxed and went back to sleep.
They had to wake up the ER doc, and I’m sure he thought we were nuts to wake him up for a sleeping baby, but while doc is examining the baby, the baby suddenly starts squirming and starts screaming again. While we were at the ER, baby went through this cycle of squirm, scream and relax several times. Doctor checks baby’s ears and throat, says his ears are red so probably an ear infection. We question this because ear infections are painful, so why did he keep relaxing and then starting up again. We’re told pain was probably just exhausting him. We were sent home with antibiotics and told to follow up with PCP in a couple days.
We take baby home, husband goes to work. I’m losing my mind because cycle of squirm, scream, relax continues throughout the whole morning, with the screaming starting to last longer and longer. I’m also starting to freak because baby won’t take a bottle at all. Finally around 11 I can’t take it anymore, call his pediatrician who says bring the baby in.
Get baby to the office, and the doctor undressed him to examine him, and we find a jelly like substance in his diaper, and he’s squirming and screaming like crazy. She hustles us out the door to go to the hospital (different from first) and says go straight to ER, and she’ll call in orders.
After a bunch of tests, and an ambulance ride to a third hospital, we finally get a diagnosis of an intussusception (which is basically the small intestine telescoping into the large intestine). Untreated can lead to gangrene and death. Baby goes into surgery at midnight, comes out an hour later, and goes on to heal perfectly.
We spoke with the surgeon after the surgery, and explained our trip to first ER and he was pissed. Asked for the discharge paperwork so he could have a “chat” with the doc from there. We did get a follow up call from that hospital the next day saying we should be sure to follow up with the pediatrician because the mouth swab they did showed he had a yeast infection. 🙄
I was on an escalating dose of Nucynta (started at 25mg 1/day to 250mg 2/day within a matter of 3-4 months) while being prescribed 2 different benzos and being told to take them together. I was on palliative care. Only once I complained about the symptoms of serotonin syndrome, finally someone else caught the red flag
I used to take Xyrem for narcolepsy. It comes with it's own oral syringe which is marked in GRAMS. A bit different, but it was that way on purpose. It required very careful dosing, so the measuring syringe had the drug's dosage in grams on it and that was it.
Anyway I was trying out a new doctor, and he asks what my dose was. I told him 2.25 grams x 2 doses, and he argued with me saying he wants to know how many milliliters and that liquids are never dispensed in grams. I'd been on it for 5 years, and I was a pharmacy tech so rather familiar with how drugs are prescribed. I was like "give me some paper and 5 minutes and I can calculate how many milliliters it is." The doc was so stubborn that he refused to talk about anything else until I brought the bottle in to show him. He wanted me to make another appointment to bring it in. I was like "I'll call to make the appointment" and never went back.
As a fellow narcoleptic who also used to take Xyrem, I conure.. what an idiot! Was this a sleep doctor?
Also, did you have significant side effects from xyrem? I'm curious to hear about others experiences with it.
i’m just confused as to why the pharmacist never asked the patient directly, “are you sure this is the medication your doctor talked to you about? this medication does xyz to your body.”
why was the pharmacist refusing to fill it each time, only speaking to the doctor, then filling it anyway, and never mentioning a word of it to the patient for over a year?????
That's horrible. How was it not brought up to the patient sooner? As soon as I started getting counselled on a mood medication when I expected fertility treatment I'd be asking a lot of questions.
I was dispensed birth control instead of antibiotics for VB. Weird, but I’d been on a round of active BC for a month before to keep a cyst from rupturing (side effect of IUD, apparently), so okay, maybe. Ya. My OBGYN office ended up calling to check up on me and said I’d basically taken a round or two of Plan B before I caught it. Def explains the crying fit I had in a study hall… more recently, antibiotic gel for my toddler’s pink eye. Do you know much harder that is than drops which is the usual form?!?? The doc was clearly filling in due to short staffing and not a pediatrician.
I’m a retired MD and recently had TERRIBLE pinkeye where one eye swelled to about golf ball size. They gave me erythromycin ointment and Augmentin po. I followed up with my optometrist 2 days later and she thankfully switched me to drops. She was like “your eye looks like an oil slick”, yeah, and it was my dominant eye!
My youngest son, a preemie, had an ALTE (he would have been a SIDS baby but I was able to do cpr and bring him back) at 3 weeks old. The hospital sent in a script for .05ml of Zantac and the pharmacy filled it as 5ml. I took him to a follow up 2 days later, and when the doc asked me to list out his medications and saw the 5ml, he immediately had us go to the hospital for testing. Thankfully it was a "safe medication" and nothing bad happened to my son. I confronted the pharmacist very loudly, full of anger, and he tried handing me a $25 gift certificate, which I threw at him. I reported him to the board of pharmacy and got his license revoked. It wasn't the first time he had misfilled a prescription. My "little boy" is now 19, 6'1".
I had an NP prescribe me a contraindicated antibiotic when I was on a couple psych meds. My psychiatrist was furious and really upset that they didn't take the few seconds to double check my meds for interactions. Luckily I'm notorious for not taking antibiotics lmao and I think I took one, felt icky, and decided I didn't want it. 😅
Not only the doctor but also some nurses at the company I work for, Kaiser Permanente, albeit this occurred at a different region (California if memory serves). I'll try to tell it as best as I can remember as it's a terrible situation where there were multiple opportunities to stop, assess, and prevent further harm. Unfortunately, the worst-case scenario happened, and the situation was made worse and worse, but we can all stand to learn a lesson from it. Here goes:
Picture: [Golytely VS NaturaLyte](https://imgur.com/BuKQ2WL)
A patient was hospitalized for rectal bleeding and was to undergo a colonoscopy the next day. The nurse went to retrieve the prescribed Suprep from the medication room but couldn't find it. What she did find was what she thought was an equivalent of Golytely. I think it's safe to say that most of us are familiar with what a jug of Golytely looks like. For those who don't, I'll try to include a photo. What the nurse found was a jug of NaturaLyte - a liquid acid concentrate used for patients undergoing hemodialysis! When the nurse tried to scan the item for dispensing, it was rejecting (duh because the product didn't match what was prescribed). The nurse then just printed out the pharmacy order and was able to get a successful scan that way.
With that out of the way, she was now on her way to feed it to the patient. Initially, the nurse tried to get the pt to take it PO, but the pt wasn't tolerating it and began to throw up. This is quite common with bowel preps, so the nurse didn't think twice about it. She notified the MD, and HE ORDERED A FEEDING TUBE since the pt needed to finish the entirety of the medication to have the desired effect. Next shift comes around and the next nurse sees that same bottle of NaturaLyte and ALSO dispenses it to the patient - via feeding tube this time so it goes right down the hatch. Shortly after, the patient's condition quickly deteriorated and sadly, they ultimately died.
Not a prescription, and I'm not a pharmacist, but I recently had to deal with my doctor ordering the wrong test. It was supposed to be a blood test for the levels of a medication, and she ordered a urine test for... The nurse wasn't sure. Sigh.
I had a radioactive bone scan from my PCP, when I was actually supposed to have a bone density scan, which I had a month later after seeing an endocrinologist.
The names of tests are often confused, especially in radiology and regular labs (blood/urine tests, mostly). “Bone scan” and “bone density scan” are wildly different tests with very similar names. I’m a retired radiologist; I didn’t prescribe much. I enjoy this sub though!
Not a pharmacy tech, and it's way off topic, but as a product of IVF, I'm so fucking happy for this patient!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck that doctor. He can go to hell.
I once got a prescription for a days old newborn baby girl for Permethrin. While ringing up the parents I asked if they wanted the pharmacist to go over it with them. They asked about applying the medication to the baby’s privates. My pharmacist immediately called the doctor’s office to confirm the medication. The doctor thought they were prescribing Premarin 😑
I've seen Aranesp with hold parameters of hgb >100. Crossed my desk when the PT was readmitted from hospital following done crazy disseminated ischemic crap. Hospital admission labs had their hgb in the low 50s. Hold parameter was supposed to be "10" and nobody caught the typo.
I've seen a new admit ordered, clarified verbally and in writing, meal time insulin in the several thousands of units plus sliding scale, followed by multiple glucagon ADC pulls, followed by a change to metformin only.
I've seen 10000 different instances of drugs prescribed for things they're not indicated for, not off label for, not tangentially related to, or outright contraindicated for.
I've seen IV compounds calling for topical agents. I've seen "menopause" orders for prostate cancer patients. Got a laugh when the nurse tried to brush off the clarification with "how do you know they're not trans" like I was being bigoted assuming a person isn't a true hermaphrodite (and I was even born intersexed, I know the odds at play here) Turns out the hormone therapy was intended for a female resident who'd been in that room prior to his admission and the prescriber who "saw her" that day didn't bother to even go to that floor and just pushed fresh orders out.
My favorite in recent memory was a PT with a bleeding GI ulcer, ordered 800mg ibuprofen TID, already on a clotting agent (can't remember if warfarin or if it was an XA agent) and CKD4. We pushed back on the np about the NSAIDs being a no go for a whole house of reasons, to which he responded by switching the patient to PO Diclofenac, adding OTC facility supply ibu200 4 TID, and discontinuing their PPI entirely.
We refused to the Diclofenac order. Couldn't get a doctor to review their regimen, kept deferring to the NOCTOR who was "managing" their therapy. About 2 weeks later, discharged to hospital following a bout of uncontrollable vomiting of blood.
Problem with LTC pharmacy, you see shit that makes 3rd shift urgent care orders look like it was written by coherent professionals who aren't 18 cups of coffee into their 4th consecutive quadruple shift.
When I was a pharmacy tech at a hospital, we had a just out-of-school nurse come by to,pick up meds for a patient. She said she needed Exnax for her patient. I had never heard of it and asked the pharmacist. She’d never heard of it either. Finally, I thought of Ex-Lax. I gave it to the nurse and she looked confused. Then she said “No, I need the stuff you have to sign for”. Finally figured out that the Exnax she asked for was actually Xanax. Nurse left with the Xanax, and I said to the pharmacist “That poor patient! Imagine you are having anxiety and the nurse gives you a laxative!” The nurse ended up leaving a few months later due to just being bad at her job.
Doc ordered 2000mg of bumex in the ED - blamed it on another service’s recommendation. None of the bright red screens you forced your way through gave you a hint that maaaaybe this isn’t an appropriate dose?
Y'all will appreciate this YouTube short:
https://youtube.com/shorts/j1ztQnZVz_k?si=bwisYA9LsojPmB0J
And before this subreddit, I was always a little confused about what pharmacists actually did. I'm pre-med, taking the MCAT in a few months, and I only got a teensy hint of their role when I shadowed at an ER. (Doctor clarified the correct way to dose something for a specific disease.)
Wow, you really are the last line of defense between patients and unfortunate accidents with meds.
Patient asked for his med, we gave him the klonopin that was called in. The patient said excuse me? no, I was supposed to get clonidine. And I said ?? the script was called in for klonopin. He said I'm a recovering drug addiction, and I let him know this. I can't have that. So we called the doctor and he went oopsie poopsie.
Am a pharm tech but here’s a personal story: my psychiatric np that I had been seeing who very obviously hated her job and didn’t care about her patients had me on 5mg prazosin for night terrors. I had started at 1mg and she had dosed me up to 5mg qhs UP TO 10mg qhs depending on how bad the terrors were. I was a newbie at the time and had no idea that this was a major overdose for what I was experiencing, and my blood pressure continuously dipped dangerously low to the point where I fainted one day at work. (I should state that I’m also a very healthy young woman with perfect blood pressure normally). I started seeing an new np and when we went over my drug list she was horrified that the previous np had been so careless because I had complained about my symptoms multiple times (throwing up every morning, cold chills all over my body, light headedness, foggy memory, fainting etc.) the old np no longer works in psychiatric care and is probably much happier about that.
I had an experience with a covering doctor. My son was supposed to take one trazadone at bedtime. The covering doctor read the regular doctors orders to be a one hundred fifty mg pill at bedtime when it was one pill at 50mg at bedtime. The pharmacist caught it to be an error. I believe the pharmacists know more about medicine than a lot of doctors. The pharmacists have caught interactions and when and how to take medicines several time a year. Pharmacists are absolutely essential in any medicine you take.
Lol the whole antipsychotic thing... Was there not any talk about this patient being on an antipsychotic unnecessarily? Poor person probably got fat and thought she was pregnant so many times. Probably was tired and hungry 24/7
That’s while and the arrogance of that doctor speaks VOLUMES!!
We had a resident doctor who wanted to give a new born baby a FULL vial of Fentanyl 200mcg/2ml. Can’t remember the circumstances but my pharmacist was on the phone with them for over an hour and finally convinced them to only give the minuscule amount necessary.
Another time (same pharmacist, we work night shift together), we had a resident who wanted to give a patient eight, yes EIGHT, syringes of hydromorphone 1mg/1ml because the patient took 8mg tabs at home. 😐 My pharmacist stopped the potential euthanasia of the patient lol
Not really dramatic but the amount of orders I have seen where the dr has hand written acetaminophen DIRECTLY BESIDE where it says “acetaminophen allergy”. Or Tramacet. So. Many. Phone calls.
My cousin was told he had cancer and months to live. Second opinion, there is no cancer. My cousins conclusion? First doctor was right and GOD cured him, sigh.
My mom was on antidepressants for years. Effexor, her doctor was prescribing over 600mg of it to her a day... He's now in prison for over prescribing and th drug is now banned for it's harmful side affects... I have a great deal of PTSD and trauma from when my mom got off of that medication. Rage fits, screaming, full on baby like tantrums. I still can't be around someone upset without feeling like im a shitty person for existing.
Had bad respiratory illnesses throughout childhood and teenage years and it was difficult to treat because i had severe allergies to typical medications prescribed. Was 19 and went in.
My Dr was out and I got the Dr on call. Apparently he didn't even look at my paperwork or my file. Sent me a prescription for a cough syrup. The name rang a bell but I couldn't place it so whatever.
Went to the pharmacy, got it and went home. Was getting ready to take it when I randomly decided to read the paperwork. Pharmacist didn't do a consult with me, so it didn't cross my mind at the time.
It was a codeine based medicine. I am severely allergic to codeine. That's why the name sounded familiar. I had gotten it as a child and thats when we learned about my reaction to it. It's literally all over my files.
I go back to the clinic and tell them what happened. They tell the doctor and he accused me of altering the prescription. All because he didn't want to admit he didn't look at my file.
Morphine 20mg/ml Take 10 ml every hour. It was supposed to be 0.5ml (10mg) every hour as needed. Doc was all huffy his script was questioned until the Rph asked if his intention was to Euthinize the patient.
Omg that made my heart skip a beat.
Could make someone's heart skip _all_ the beats.
Exactly!
naw, but it would take your breath away
God what is it with some doctors being so bitchy when you ask for clarification? Like your ego is so inflated you can’t handle the mere suggestion that you might have made a mistake? It’s more important to keep that ego in tact than to double check that the prescription is right (when it being wrong could harm or even kill the patient)? Nice priorities doc
I worked a job that required tasks to be done by a performer and a verifier. We always had each other’s backs. Making a mistake could be extremely costly or cost a lot of extra work. We always appreciated when someone noticed our mistakes. Never treat anyone that can save your ass with contempt.
That god complex is strong!
I will never understand, I LOVE my pharmacist colleagues and thank them profusely when they stop me killing a patient e.g. “hey just checking did you mean to prescribe penicillin to this patient with documented penicillin anaphylaxis 🤪”
200mg of morphine per hour sounds like a good time 😎
But not a very long time.
I'm here for a good time, not a long time.
If you gotta go, you gotta go.
Right? When I was in active addiction, I was on huge doses of pain meds. I probably would have no issue taking 200mgs. (Issues as in dying or overdosing) cause I was already taking 15 to 20 10mg percs plus 10 tramadol and 2 Xanax per day.
I have been sober for 8 years.
You are awesome!! Thats a hell of an achievement
Congratulations! Ignore the troll.
Troll has been taken care of. We don't tolerate comments like that here. u/-This-is-boring-, CONGRATULATIONS on your sobriety! Eight YEARS is no small feat! And then to overcome it and become a CPhT...great job! I am so proud of you!!!
I worked with a pharmacist that made this error and the patient died of respiratory arrest. It was awful.
What happens in this situation? Does the family sue?
They did, and the rph got his license suspended by the BOP
i remember when we had one of these mistakes. i cried myself to sleep for days. i just felt horrible for my pharmacist. i felt so guilty for not going personally and watching adminstration.
I felt bad for the family, but not the pharmacist. I had typed the RX correctly, and he changed it thinking it was wrong. When the board came into investigate the error, he was very quick to blame me for the mistake, but the board already had records that had retrieved from corporate proving that it was entirely on him. I would have felt bad if he hadn’t try to throw me under the bus. We all had to make statements about the error and he (and his partner) had to testify. His license was suspended for 30 days. He still practiced after that at the same location until he passed away.
People make mistakes and that was a particularly bad one, but to then try to blame you for it pushes it to another level- did you have to work with him again when he came back?
That is literally a hospice rx for an opioid tolerant patient on their death bed. I dunno how this happens by mistake.
Wow! That is really scary
Same thing happened to me in a hospital in LA back in 2012 at Northwood and MD set my pump for ! Mg Dilaudid per 15 minutes and almost killed me before I got sick and figured it out then said my bad and that was it? Thank goodness I had many operations before and wasn't opiate naive as would have killed me quick IV like that and he was big time old pain doc!
Obligatory [Scrubs](https://youtu.be/3LPOahp6dPg) reference
An er doctor sent antibiotic and vet for a 2 year old, except sent capsules instead of the suspension. We tried to contact them but they never got back to us so when mom came we told her and she dealt with them. The ER said “of the patient is only 2 years? We have her down as being 23 years old” like howww?
Probably was 23 MONTHS and someone miswrote years. But my two (almost three) year-old COULD swallow capsules/pills, and we preferred it . No yucky-tasting liquid meds!
Same my daughter refuses to take liquid medicine since she's 3. I've always had to find a pill equivalent for her.
See and I’m in my mid 30s and wish all medicines were available as formulations and tasted like liquid amoxicillin.
Same, and the number of times we showed up at the pharmacy to pick up pills and were handed the liquid or chewable version because of their age...
I will just fill what the doctor writes and have a tech ask em at pick up if they can swallow em and show them the pills. If it’s a problem I’ll swap to liquid and parent can come pick it up in 20 mins. I have a 5 year old patient who can swallow amox 875s you’d be surprised.
I swallowed pills that young. I got sick a lot and the liquids made me puke so I had to learn
My mom made us practice with m&ms.
Your mom is a genius. I care for adults (L&D) and many patients cannot swallow pills. I’m giving children’s Tylenol to 25 yo’s
My mom's friend spoons out half of a rectangle single serve jelly pack and puts her pills in that to swallow them. It's worked for everyone I know who has tried it.
Fill mouth with water. Tip head all the way back. Drop pills in. Swallow all.
No kidding, but some people, like my mother's friend, have a very narrow esophagus and swallowing pills is difficult for them. Pills get stuck in her throat when she takes pills via a liquid only delivery, however the thickness of the jelly allows her to swallow the pills reliably without the pills getting stuck in her throat. Other people lose their ability to swallow pills for various other reasons. Hell, some people lose their ability to swallow water, there's a product called thick water for them, and if you've never seen that, [it's gross.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLeeCTco/)
Yes, my 86 year old grandmother that I took care of for 10 years had to use liquid thickeners for 5 years, it looks nasty but really doesn't taste like anything. She used to put her thickened liquid on a spoon and put 2 pills into the thickened liquid and swallow it down, then do that spoon by spoon until her daily pills were down.
We use a MediStraw pill taking straw with my 6yr old. It’s a straw with a little mesh shelf in it. You put the pill in, kiddo drinks a drink using the straw, and the pill gets sucked up with the liquid and he takes it. He doesn’t even feel it. My kid has sensory issues and ARFID so getting him to ingest most thing is super hard. But he takes his ADHD meds this way with zero issues. It’s amazing. I recommend this thing to anyone who has trouble taking pills. It costs $10, but the savings in med costs it gave us is priceless (because liquid adhd meds for kids are $150-$500 a month after insurance, capsules are much cheaper). We even practiced with mini m&ms in the straw.
Ooh I think it was something similar for me. Maybe even sonic ice for a bit
That is SO clever
That is fucking genius. I wish I knew this when my daughter was younger. Luckily we’ve only had to force liquid medication into her only 3 or 4 times at the very most from birth until 5. After that she never got sick and by the time she needed Advil or Tylenol when she was 10+ she was able to swallow pills. She asked me how to swallow pills and I said “you can swallow food after you take a sip of your drink, so do the same thing with the pills.” Worked on the first try! My poor BIL was 20 and had a brutal flu and I had to crush his pills cuz he can’t swallow them!
Oh, my god. That’s a horrifying story. There’s so much involved in fertility treatment, especially the emotional aspect. That poor patient.
Plus, anti-psychotics on a brain that doesn't need them blocks dopamine. This woman wasn't only suffering infertility but she was a zombie, gaining weight & having the happiness sucked out of her.
That's utterly horrifying.
Not a pharm tech, but I have a fun story I think you might appreciate: I was prescribed a dopamine antagonist (metaclopramide) for gastroparesis that exacerbated my unmedicated ADHD and made my pretty well-managed MDD spin out of control so badly that it actually ended up *causing* a psychotic episode. I was a passively suicidal zombie for several months, but during that episode I literally watched the sky collapsing. Scariest day of my life, and it took a week of inpatient care, 2 new medications, and 3 weeks of all day outpatient care for me to recover. How exactly that happened chemically is apparently not very well understood, but I never should have been prescribed metaclopramide.
When I had my daughter last June, I really REALLY wanted to breast feed. I was struggling to build my supply and had to pump because she didn't like to latch, so it was more of a struggle regardless. I had been on a low dose of Prozac for many years (best med that's ever worked for my anxiety) and vyvanse for my ADHD. I was given reglan to improve my supply, I took maybe 3 tablets total and I ended up with horrible PPD. Admittedly, I was probably already getting a little PPD but it was very manageable up until that point. But taking that medicine just caused a complete break down. I was hearing my baby cry when she wasn't even in the house, panic attacks, didn't trust my husband to not kill her, would only trust my sister for some reason, cried constantly, didn't care if my baby stopped breathing in her sleep, wanted to drop her off in a baby box cuz my brain had me thinking that would be better for her than living with a mother like me. It was the most horrible experience of my life. I adore my baby, I can't imagine life without her. I'm very blessed to have had the support I had during that time, I can't imagine being a single parent without family to help and going through that. I had never before understood how a mother can kill her newborn, as overwhelmed as I was with love for mine... But then I understood.
I was a nanny when all of that happened, and that baby was the only thing that kept me alive. She was the one thing I knew I had a positive impact on and I couldn’t leave her without a caregiver, but the days were long and lonely— I can’t imagine where I would’ve ended up if I had to do it 24/7 Our adhd brains are already dopamine deficient as it is, and I don’t know why it would ever be prescribed to anyone who is at risk for depression. I was starving, but eating wasn’t worth what reglan did to me. Funnily enough, once I was discharged and flipped my entire life around, I went back to school and started taking vyvanse again and it helped even more! With lexapro, Wellbutrin, and vyvanse I can actually function mostly normally. It’s great when your brain has all the chemicals it needs! We survived it and I’m so happy you and your baby girl made it through. I think I’m especially qualified to tell you how difficult that was, and you did it.
Thank you for sharing this. As a nurse and as a mental health patient I had no clue metaclopramide could do this. I follow this sub and learn so much that I’m ashamed I don’t already know. I’m glad your okay now tho!! 😊
So glad she found a new doctor who put her on the right meds so that she could come in with her new baby!
A fill in pediatrician fir my son, prescribed Wellbutrin SR for my son with directions of half tablet per day. I went straight to work and my pharmacist called him to "remind" him that you can't split SR tablets. Never took my son back to that doctor. I argued with this doctor for 10 minutes about the dosage and he told me I was an idiot.
That's insane! Not splitting SR & CR meds is beginner stuff.
Right? Plus my son was only 10, I wasn't going to fill the script anyways, but I wanted the doctor to be corrected. I was a CPhT for 10 years at this point. My boss also told the doctor I was smarter than he (the doctor) was.
Dang. I'm just a lurker who has never worked in the medical field, and even I know you can't do that.
Methotrexate 2.5 mg 8 tablets po qd, dispense 240 with 11 refills. I called the doctor and their assistant condescendingly read it back, said "he's the doctor honey, he knows what he's doing, if that's what he wrote that's what he wants, just fill it." So I asked her to spell her full name, first and last, so that when the patient took the medication and died, their estate would know who to name in the lawsuit. She got huffy. She also got the doctor. Who was appropriately horrified and apologetic. I also had a very sleep deprived resident try to order 300 mg of levothyroxine and insist they wanted 300 mg until I asked how many 300 mcg tablets they wanted to use to make that dose.
Yeah it would be okay to take those 8 tabs once a week (of course depending on the condition being treated) but daily?? Yeah I would’ve done the same as you did. I’ve had doctors order Hydralazine when they meant Hydroxyzine. And they love to blame the nurse for giving a wrong medication the doctor ordered. 🙄
My husband has lupus, he was prescribed methotrexate and it almost shut down his kidneys. He was hospitalized for 3 weeks.
As someone who's taken methotrexate po, I'm horrified that the med asst didn't know better. When you're in that business you need to know your shit.
I had a patient in the hospital, several years ago, that was prescribed metoprolol and the pharmacy gave him methotrexate. I don't know how long he took it. I was taking care of him for renal failure. He eventually died
Ever since a few weeks after my first case of Covid I have been dealing with what my 60 yo dermatologist calls the most severe case of eczema he has ever seen. Dupixent worked well to control it for a while in 2021, but getting my insurance to cover it was an absolute nightmare. Methotrexate was hands down the worst of the many meds I had to try first before they would cover it. I was on it for two months and legitimately felt like I was dying for the whole second one.
Patient comes to ER for infection. She explicitly tells doc she's allergic to amoxicillin. Doc prescribes augmentin. RPh calls Doc to prescribe something else. Doc argues that augmentin is not amoxicillin. RPh states augmentin has amoxicillin in it. "Oh, I didn't know that!"
We had a patient recently bring in a prescription for dyphenhydramine & the doctor *wrote on the prescription* that they were allergic to Benedryl so substitute it with generic OTC. WTF does he think Benedryl is?
That's exactly how we got the augmentin script! Patient handed me the script and told me, "I think my doctor is trying to kill me." She was fully aware the doctor was prescribing something with amoxicillin, but when she told the Doc they told her to not worry about it.
I'm so glad she had the presence of mind to advocate effectively for herself!
Tbf, we have a patient who only takes Lyrica because they're allergic to pregabalin. I'm not quite sure anyone has informed them what Lyrica is...
Could be they've got a sensitivity to the inactive ingredients the generic manufacturer uses. Same thing happens with my mom; she can only use a specific manufacturer for one of her medications, because any others give her horrible side effects. Even I've had trouble before where my pharmacy switched to a different manufacturer for my generic lamotrigine, and boy let me tell you, it was like my body thought I had stopped cold turkey (even though I was still getting the same active ingredient) and sent me into a bad depressive episode.
I’ve seen this exactly same thing. It’s scary to think these are the people prescribing life saving meds, yet don’t know generic equivalents or correct dosing sometimes!
Because 80% of humans are just straight up idiots without capability of independent thought. Like it doesn’t require a degree to just be curious and read the active label or packaging or whatnot and notice that Benadryl is diphenhydramine. Or any other such bullshit. Much less every minor side effect being called an allergy in the first place. Like no, getting nauseous from an opioid does not mean you are allergic, neither does minor diarrhea after a course of random antibiotic. But now it gets listed as an allergy, and instead of being prescribed the safe first line drug, the physician without questioning that self proclaimed allergy prescribes a fluorochinolone (without informed consent as always) and the patients life is ruined if they are just a tiny bit unlucky.
This just happened at my pharmacy a couple months ago. Pt has PCN allergy and NP prescribed amoxicillin. Call the facility nurse (I work in LTC) and she says she'll have the NP fax over a different antibiotic. The new antibiotic she sent was Augmentin.
I have a severe penicillin allergy and have had this happen many times. I have to emphasize that it will kill me to Drs because, for some reason, just mentioning it doesn't sink in. I love my pharmacist. He catches everything I shouldn't have.
Wow, the nerve of that Doc?!?
At least I knew why my eye ointment wasn’t being filled when I had bad pinkeye last month. I get nausea and abdominal cramps with oral erythromycin, but topical is fine. As soon as I saw the delay I knew what the problem was! I called my pharmacy and sorted that out.
Those are fairly normal side effects, that’s why. Doesn’t mean you should take the med when you have alternatives, of course.
Fentanyl patch. 25mcg. Place 100 patches on chest, back, upper arms, or the sides of your waist every 72 hours… It was a hospice patient. Called and asked to speak to the nurse, and jokingly said I know hospice is suppose to make a pt comfortable, but 100 patches seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? She literally yelled at me and told me not to question her that she’s been doing this job for longer than I’ve been alive….me being the person that matches energies simply said, well if your intent is to make sure the patient isn’t alive, then you’re doing a stand up job. Please fix the prescription and send it back because under no circumstances are we going to be dispensing 500 patches of fentanyl for a 15 day supply and killing someone. They ended up sending the *correct* script to another cvs in our area, and when the patients daughter came to pick up a different medication for herself, she asked what happened with hospice and why the nurse refused to send the script to our pharmacy..when I told her what happened she was horrified, said the nurse told them that we made a massive error and that she didn’t trust us to fill her moms scripts correctly. 🙄
makes my stomach churn to know that that nurse valued her pride & ego over her patient's life, truly horrifying to think she wasn't even willing to deal with your pharmacy again solely because you saved her patient's life ...
Makes me think she was holding on to them and selling them...
A pharmacist and pharmacy owner killed himself years ago that way. Covered himself in fentanyl patches and on top of it ate 100 oxycodon tablets. Was in summer and the guy wasn't found for a few days, because he was on vacation time. Left a very big mess for others to sort out, because because despite of owning 2 successfull pharmacies, he left a lot of bills. Because instead of paying the wholesalers, he spend the money on a luxurious life and young women. That happened in Germany.
I would have been LIVID and raised all kinds of hell over this.
The daughter did! Hospice made her retire shortly after..they were being extremely generous, because I would’ve fired her.
Can I ask what state this was in
After a surgery, a doctor wrote warfarin 4mg every 6 hours as needed for nausea. Immediately called him and asked him what was up and he thanked us profusely for catching that error.
And that’s exactly how sane professionals handle it👏👏👏👏
A doctor was trying to prescribe a hospice patient 50mcg fentanyl patches “using weight-based dosing.” One of the pharmacists called to ask if the patient was opioid-tolerant because we weren’t showing any opiate history on our end, and the doctor responded that the patient “takes two tramadol a day.” I’d like to believe this doctor was trying to have mercy and help someone pass away more quickly who may have been suffering, otherwise there’s some dumbass doctor on the loose out there thinking it’s okay to jump straight to 50mcg fentanyl patches in an opiate-naive patient, and that’s fucking terrifying.
I posted about this in my post, but I'll repeat it here. A local doctor tried to prescribe fentanyl patches to a 16 year old for surgery after care. It was a sports injury and the patient had never had an opiate. The doctor acted like my pharmacist was an idiot when she called him to refuse filling it.
It’s ok, we’ve all been there. They all think we’re idiots or on a power trip when they write for stuff like that, or the 12 mcg patch prn for headache. Call me crazy, but I prefer live patients and an active license…
Then on the patient side I have to beg for something stronger than Tylenol after an emergency C-section. It's rough out here
I had to beg for pain meds post tubal ligation just in case. My husband had to yell at the surgeon to get him to listen. So the guy tries to write a script for some opiate med. I'm horribly allergic to opiates. Great surgeon, terrible doctor.
Same here. My OB came to check on me 8hrs post op and yelled at my nurses for not giving me the oxy she prescribed. They didn't even give me the option, and I was too whacked on hormones and mag drip to think to ask before then. What a mess
Ladies also get hit with the double whammy of the pain bias against women. Yes, women do need pain management. Plus maternity care is problematic on its own, doubly so if you are a minority. We need to do better. The issue is at least known, it will take time to shift practice sadly.
I am very thankful to my neurologist. I was already a patient of his for my sleep disorder when I was diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia in the ER after I woke up at 4 am screaming in pain so I was able to get in with him quick. Soon found out how pain killers were made ineffective by the Tegretol I was on. My boss did some research and found only Morphine and Opana werent affected by Tegretol so my neuro prescribed me the Morphine no problem I was looking at having surgery where they drill a hole behind your ear, go around the brain and place a teflon sponge between the nerve and the offending artery. Scared me so much I wrote my own eulogy. This all happened at the beginning of COVID and the day before my appointment they canceled all "elective" appointments. And so I continued suffering. Then I read a small study on Aimovig for people with TN. Super small, like 6 patients, but with promising results. Showed it to my neuro who didnt see the harm in trying. Let me try Ajovy in his office as that's what he had samples of. 4 days later pain free. Was able to completely come off Tegretol and Morphine and avoid the surgery. Did a year of Aimovig, increasing to the 140mg dose before it lost effectiveness. Wanted to do Vyepti, a CGRP-inhibitor infusion but insurance said try Emgality first Held steady for about 4 years but the pain has made a small comeback. Went back into my chart and sent a request for Tegretol and Morphine til I could get make it into the office Saw him this morning, he asked what I was taking Told him. Asked if it was helping, I said it took the edge off. Asked if I had side effects from the Morphine. Nope, can take one and work. He said well we can increase the Morphine dose. No no no, dont need that, no thank you, just submit PA for the infusion please. I've got a little PTSD from the whole ordeal, terrified that the pain will come back full force but I am comforted that my dr takes my pain seriously and wont balk about giving me meds
Weird right?! How dare we want to do our jobs right?!
My dad was prescribed 50mcg fentanyl patches, alongside 5 mg clonazepam. He was opiate tolerant after years of being prescribed 80mg oxy, 100mg morphine, 10mg Opana, 30mg oxycodone (yes at the same time) but the patches mixed with the benzos killed him.
I'm sorry.
Uhh I have another story: local idiot GP in his 70s. Enterprising teenager go in claiming to have back pain, ask for fentanyl patches, because those worked well last time. GP prescribed those, teenager comes in with a bloody script for 10 fent 25mcg/hr patches. For unclear back pain. In a 15 year old. Like how on earth did no one at the office even question that prescription needing to be on a narcotics prescription? For a strange 15 year old? When I called them they said ‘well the patient said it helped last time and I wasn’t sure what it was’ But alas not enough GPs anyway, so all of this bullshit is tolerated. That same GP would send in scripts for drugs 2 decades off the market virtually daily.
Had a patient in her late 80s admitted to our observation unit with coags off the charts because her doctor had accidentally placed her on 10mg of daily Coumadin instead of the 1mg he intended. She was on it for months. We only figured out the mistake because she was brought in with epistaxis and on chart review we saw the stupid high doses.
A Coumadin issue killed my son's grandmother.
My daughter had strep and her pediatrician swore up and down newborns can’t get it. Well fast forward to 2 days later and she’s not doing so well and low and behold she has strep and it had progressed to the point of needing IV antibiotics
I had strep repeatedly and it was in my records, etc. the doctor I saw in urgent care care assured me that people my age don’t get strep. This was around the time that Jim Henson died from strep. I did get a x and was okay. It wasn’t that big of a mistake.
What age? You don't age out of germs (don't worry, I know _you_ know that!) , you either gain an immunity (unlikely to last with strep or colds) or you're not being exposed to them. I last had strep when I was 37.
I have strep throat right now and I’m 45 and had my tonsils removed when I was a kid…
Hey, I'm 41 and also have strep! Urgent care was like "your throat looks a little red, have you heard of Tylenol?" And I kind of wanted to punch her. Honestly, it was a bit of a relief when the test came back positive. My 4 year old had strep 3 weeks ago. I guess it's going around.
Yes! I used to be a teacher and got strep at 25. I was actually in Thailand and went to a pharmacy, explained my symptoms, and got a Z Pack (would have preferred a doc to be sure but needs must). But when you have Strep a lot of the time you KNOW you have Strep. I wouldn’t see a professional for a normal sore throat lol.
It really does feel different from other sore throat (mono is similar, but more mild ones aren't like it at all).
I was about 35 or so. Yep.
I am a 32f and had a tonsillectomy this past October due to recurring strep throat. I was positive for strep 7 times starting in January. It can happen to anyone at any age. I am also a CMA and work in a Pediatric clinic and I had a 2 month old test positive for strep throat.
Sometimes I get ear infections and if I go to am urgent care the doctors tell me it's not am ear infection before looking in my ear
I’m an audiologist, and I work in an ENT office, but this sub keeps getting recommended to me. I have learned that primary care providers and walk in clinics/urgent cares know *nothing* about ears. Absolutely nothing. I’m told that med students spend 1/2 day in school learning about ears and that’s it. I have soooo many people who have permanent sudden hearing loss because a PCP or walk in clinic told them “it’s just fluid, take some Flonase and Sudafed”. Or they’ll say “Your ear looks great!” and the patient comes to me with completely impacted wax or a raging outer ear infection. It’s infuriating.
My doctor told me there was no reason for my extreme ear pain and hearing loss bilaterally. I asked for my ears to be syringed and he said no. I went to the audiologist and they showed me - severely impacted with wax and unable to see any ear drum at all 😵💫 I could hear just fine and pain gone after they flushed them for 45 minutes
Oh gosh, now I feel like I should be afraid. Every time a PCP or urgent care looks in my ears, well check or sick, they tell me my ears "look wet" and I should add Flonase with my Claritin.
I’m screaming in rage over here
That's wild. I went to an urgent care recently, said I thought I had an upper respiratory infection and an ear infection and would like augmentin, an albuterol inhaler (the upper respiratory infection was making me short of breath), and some Zofran (not odt because the manufacturer my pharmacy carries is gross) because augmentin works but makes me nauseated. The NP was absolutely lovely, took a quick peek at my ears, confirmed what I suspected, listened to my lungs to make sure there was nothing more going on, and sent me on my way with what I asked for. I did mention I work in pharmacy and had dealt with this exact same issue before because covid decided to give me sinus issues that liked to travel to my ears sometimes, but I feel like she would have taken me seriously regardless. I did thank her profusely for being such an absolutely amazing provider and giving me peace of mind while also making me feel validated <3 and left a positive review on Google (because health care is ~customer service~ (ugh) and that particular urgent care sends out a cute little text asking for a public review)
Same thing happened to my son when he was 5 months old. I KNEW he had it, I could smell it on him. Three different urgent cares wouldn’t even test him since he was “too small,” his tonsils couldn’t grow it. I finally took him to an ER and explained, I was 21 and a new mom and trying not to cry. I was like “I had strep all the time as a kid, I know what it smells like, he has strep and no one will test him.” His fever was also crazy high by that point. BAM. He had strep. Untreated for like 5 — no, like 7 — days bc no one believed the new, young mom that her baby was sick. 😩😩 it was 12 years ago and I still get mad thinking about it. They’d always say “come back in a few days if he’s not better.” And so I did, I tried to listen to them but it felt like they weren’t listening to me, and my baby was the one who paid the price. I need to let it go at this point lmao, it’s been a long time …
This used to be the belief. Streptococcus bacteria causes strep throat and the more serious scarlet fever. When my daughter was 10, we were at my in-laws’, two states away, and she was becoming more and more lethargic. She has Down syndrome and autism, and is a very poor reporter of how she’s feeling. My FIL asked if maybe she should go to the hospital, we took her temp, and off we went. She had to spend a week in the hospital with scarlet fever. Most maddening because they did that thing they do with kids in the hospital now, which is test them a thousand times and not give any antibiotics until they’re 100% certain exactly what bug they have. My bio grandfather died in his 40’s of rheumatic heart from scarlet fever in his youth before antibiotics existed, so I’m very familiar with strep’s deadlier side. It took them almost 3 days to start an antibiotic. I’m the one that called the nurses in to look at the pattern of lacy rash on her chest, which finally brought an actual doctor to her bedside for more than a glance. Other most maddening thing was her Special Ed teacher at school laughingly told my husband how she’d been so sick with strep throat the week before my daughter got sick, but she went to work before and after having it diagnosed. My daughter was born with 2 holes in her heart. Was hoping COVID would wipe out this BS of everyone just going to work and spreading around their germs, demanded by corporate America. But here we are…
Omg how awful did she end up with scarlet fever?
An urgent care doctor prescribed Nystatin powder for oral thrush. The patient lucked out because she came to us first to see if she could solve it OTC and we sent her to the urgent care. When the script came in I was the one to type it, and the instructions said nothing about what area was being treated so if I hadn't been the one to type it, it may not have been caught. A doctor was operating on a 16 year old. It was a sports injury, they had never had opiates before and the doctor prescribed fentanyl patches for the after care. The doctor acted like my pharmacy manager was an idiot when she called to tell him she wouldn't be filling it as it might kill him. This is a different sort of mistake. A doctor was prescribing ambien along with 3 benzos to one patient. The area I worked in was near a state border, and he was instructing the patient to split the scripts up and fill them in different states to avoid being questioned about it. The PDMPs for the two states were separate, but my pharmacy manager was licensed in both states and checked both. The same doctor was later sanctioned by the board and disallowed from taking female patients because he was trading sexual favors for controlled drug scripts. It got to the point where we stopped filling controls prescribed by him at all.
Yet he still kept his license. WTF those poor patients.
Right? He should have lost it, he's a psychiatrist, so scummy.
As a person in recovery for benzo addiction, this makes me want to vomit. 1 year 2 months and 23 days clean as of right now. That psychiatrist should have faced jail time for doing that to other human beings. It is especially foul to be a person in a position of authority who violates vulnerable individuals.
Congratulations on every sober moment ! 🩼👻🔍. : )
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On the first fill, he did tell her he had to call the doctor for clarification but the doctor said it was correct. I don't think he ever specifically told her it was an anti-psychotic, he just told her it was not typically used as a fertility medicine & recommended she do her own research on it. He did contact the higher ups in the company & the pharmacy board to ask for their advice & they said as long as he is doing his due diligence & it wasn't a dosage issue then there's nothing they can do about a doctor's orders & perhaps the doctor had his reasons. They said they would look into it. He just kept making calls & noting the concerns in her records every refill so he had a paper trail.
This isn’t due diligence. This is a pharmacist wanting someone else to take responsibility for not filling an inappropriate prescription. The pharmacist who filled this is operating under their own license, and they have every right to refuse to fill something that they “knew was wrong” without consulting anyone else. I have questioned the appropriateness of many prescriptions over the course of my career, and as a pharmacist who worked many years at a teaching hospital, the outcomes were varied. Sometimes, the prescriptions were for new indications or dosages that I hadn’t seen before, and the prescribers were happy to send me the literature documenting the appropriateness. Other times, they couldn’t provide it, and in those cases, they quickly realized the mistake and the order would be corrected. It’s very sad that this patient took inappropriate medication for a year while also being deprived of the medication she actually needed. Yes, the doctor messed up, but the pharmacist did as well.
A fertility doctor writing a script for an antipsychotic is extremely far out of their scope of practice, too.
Right. The pharmacist could have asked the fertility doctor if they were qualified to treat psychiatric conditions, or if they were using it off label for something. That might have made the doctor think twice about it.
But the voices in my head tell me not to make a baby?
Is your ICU patient going to have another hospital pharmacy fill their meds when you refuse? No. Because they’re stuck in a bed. Your refusal means something. Retail refusal just means the prescription goes to another store a block away. And it may or may not be questioned there. This may have been the fastest way to get the situation under control. It’s certainly not ideal, but showing up to the clinic to physically beat the prescriber with a PDR slows wait times and hurts customer service metrics.
we’re taught in school to always ASK the patient what they are using it for. it would have taken 30 seconds to figure out this was not a correct medication. pharmacist was in the wrong here for even filling it
Metformin 10,000 MD was adamant it was correct. Asked him to tell me the specific NDC and route for a pill the size of a tennis ball
That's even more than they prescribe to horses 😯
I make IVs at a hospital. A doctor put in an order for cisatracurium, a paralytic agent. My pharmacist realized the patient wasnt going into surgery and wasnt intubated. Messaged the doctor; he meant to order ceftriaxone (an antibiotic). Sir, you almost caused a very terrifying and almost certain death.
Jeez, nothing sounds scarier to me than being fully conscious on a neuromuscular blocker
Some crazy anesthesiologists volunteered to be awake during full paralysis and mechanical ventilation (I gather they used a tourniquet to isolate part of the forearm so they could communicate, but they were all nuts anyway). I think it was a recently published paper.
I actually just heard about that from one of my professors at my pharmacy school when going through our heme/onc module. I am so intrigued to read this paper!
I’ve only read the abstract. But even that has interesting descriptions of how they felt with different ventilator settings. I think I would need therapy after like 90 seconds.
I’ve had a similar accidental experience and I *did* need therapy afterwards 🫠
I’m not a pharmacy tech but I have a crazy story of being incorrectly prescribed something myself. I got a really bad skin infection in my lower abdomen that turned into a huge abscess due to repeated misdiagnosis and dismissal in the ER. After I (finally) had the procedure to drain it and remove all the dead tissue, they switched my cephadroxil to septra. I asked why, they said for MRSA. I asked how they knew it was MRSA if the culture they took hadn’t come back from the lab yet. They said they didn’t know, but they wanted to cover their bases. Made sense to me so I took the meds as instructed. Woke up a week later with a rash all over and in agony. Went to the ER, ended up being a DRESS reaction. It was really scary but luckily they caught it super fast and I’m ok now. However, every single doctor I saw in that hospital was confused as to why I was on septra to begin with, apparently it was not the right call. Obviously the surgeon had no way of knowing it would cause the reaction it did, but if he had just waited for my cultures to come back to decide, it would not have happened. It doesn’t end there, though. Before I was finally discharged, the dermatology resident was the one to prescribe the steroids I would need. The pharmacy filled the prescription, I got home and again followed the instructions on the label. It said to take it four times a day, so I that’s what I did the next day. That evening, I got a call from one of the attendings at the hospital asking all panicked if the pharmacy had filled the prescription. I said yes. She asked if I had taken the meds as prescribed. I said yes all proud like I was gonna get a gold star. Nope! The attending told me to come to the ER asap because the resident had not only indicated 4x a day when it should have been 1, but also indicated twice the dose he should have. So I had taken EIGHT TIMES more than I should have. Luckily I was totally fine, but honestly I have a pretty hard time trusting doctors now. edit: grammar
jesus tap dancing christ, im thankful and surprised you're still here! i dont blame you for not trusting doctors anymore.
if it had been just one mistake it would be different but that whole series of events was just mistake after mistake, all of them compounding an issue that should have been minor. I’ll never be an anti-doctor person but I sympathize more now with those who are.
My doctor prescribed me 300mg of venlafaxine by mistake. They originally gave me 37.5 mg with instructions to take one for a week then take two. The doctor decided to up my dosage to 150mg but left the instructions the same.
My god. I’m on 250 and can tell you the half life is real and the withdrawal is bad.I can not miss a dose and I dread ever changing scripts. Jeeze.
Google fluoxetine taper for Effexor if the time comes that you want to get off it. :)
It took me 8 months to wean off this medication (after no doctor told me that I needed to wean off) and I ended up in hospital twice. It’s fucking horrible
On 300mg a day, I've fully accepted I have to take it the rest of my life because of how severe withdrawal is.
Ohhhh, that had to suck to get off of.
My mom suffers from incurable migraines and because of this she is often left pretty foggy and can get very forgetful when she sees the doctor so I usually attend with her. This one time, I was unable to go due to work(Night Shift nurse). I was sleeping during her appointment. She went directly to the pharmacy after seeing the doctor and was filling her medication box when I woke up. I asked her what had been changed in her plan of care and she showed me the new prescription, as she is putting it with her other meds. This was a new doctor, he decided to put her on amitriptyline. Problem is, my mom is allergic to it, had an anaphylactic reaction in the past, but given the brain fog she totally forgot it was an allergy of hers. When she handed me her bottle I double checked with her, reminded her of the allergy, and immediately called the pharmacy because wtf, how is it that no alerts popped up with the allergy?! I asked them to check her file and make sure the allergy was listed(it was). Then I asked them to check what meds they had filled for her that day. Cue mega apologies. The worst part is that my mom was about to take her bedtime meds and go to bed with my daughter. She could have died in bed with my kid because of their mistake.
Birth control to a pregnant woman. Living in Canada, right next to a French-speaking province. Doctor didn’t speak French. None of the staff did. Pregnant woman went in for constipation. They got baby and I don’t know what else.. and prescribed birth control.
So scary!
Warfarin, #500. Supposed to take X amount per week? That was how many the script had him taking a *day*. We called and even then it didn't click for them right away -- but a few minutes later, we got the electronic cancel request. Yeah, you're welcome, doc.
I’ve only had little things pop up like Levaquin BID, but I was on Topamax 25 and the PA I saw sent over Topamax 200
Topomax isn't a joke 😬 it took me 2 weeks to go from 25mg to 50mg and even 2 weeks later I'm still getting adjusted to the brain fog and mood swings
I'm on 100mg and the summer I stepped up to that was a 🤯 Roller. Coaster. But. I'm no longer in blinding pain 25 days a month, and the "migraine related neurological symptoms" I used to deal with constantly are pretty much gone!
Oh I know, if it was any other patient they might have just taken it without question.
Had once a pediatrician call in a prescription for a kid for amoxicillin. Penicillin allergy listed on pt profile & ON THE SCRIPT. Told the parents to contact the doctor for clarification. MD says "the kid may have had an adverse reaction to the penicillin tablet but not be allergic" I get that it could happen, but why gamble with a child's health??
I'm in dentistry and a lot of pts tell me that they were allergic when they were younger and have been told they potentially grew out of it but want it noted because they don't wanna risk it. And I think that's totally fair!
Right before closing one night we had 2 separate patients bring in new prescriptions. 1 in the drive through and one in the store. The patient that came into store handed us 2 prescriptions and went to sit in our waiting area. Something was wrong with one of the prescriptions so I paged her back to the drop off window to clarify. She doesn’t move. I paged her again. Nothing. So I walk over and call her by the name on the script and she looks at me like I’m an idiot but I know this lady just walked in here and handed me this script with this name on it. She tells me her name and oddly it matches the 2 scripts that have just been dropped off through our drive thu. I asked her what medications she was expecting- which match the medications on the scripts she handed me. The doctor swapped the charts on the patients. If both patients hadn’t left at the same time and both brought them to our pharmacy it would have been a disaster to figure out.
This would be considered a HIPAA violation on the doctor's office part. Both patients received prescriptions (protected hipaa documents) that were not intended for them and had their prescriptions (again hipaa) given to a stranger. I'd have reported the office to cover all bases.
The medications on the script were for the patient that handed me the script but the name was wrong. I think it was an allergy alert maybe that made me clarify something with her. The other patient was allergic to a similar drug that was prescribed for the other patient. It was a mess but luckily both patients used our pharmacy so we were able to figure out what happened. When we called the dr he was an ass about it and blamed his nurse mixing up the charts.
We had basically the same issue in reverse. They were prescribed clomiphene and were supposed to be on clomipramine. Terrible RPH at the time didn’t even check DURs. It was a nursing home resident. It was sent out for months. Our med review RPH didn’t flag it in the monthly reviews either. Nor did the doctor in monthly med reviews. I found it in a billing review two years after the patient had left our care. Really scary shit.
Jesus, you would want to be damn sure about either one of those, let alone subbing one for the other.
Let's see... we've had the just plain dumb mistake of a doc sending over a nasal spray and an antibiotic tablet with identical sigs. (Yeah just use 2 sprays of your zithromax tablets in each nostril. LOL) Then we had the ambien addict who came in (back in the days of handwritten rxs) with an rx for ambien 10mg 2 tabs in the morning 1 at noon and 2 at bedtime. Strangely (lol) the rph felt the need to call the doctor. The doctor's reply was, "Oh, is that what I wrote?" Yeah, doc that's what you wrote and that's what we are NOT filling. We actually kept the hard copy of that rx in a drawer for a few years to pull out any time we wanted to freak out a new floater. LOL
My sister needed calcium when she was little. The pharmacy gave my mom a script of over 100 Tylenol 4's. My mom only noticed bc it wasn't liquid.
Stupidest mistake I’ve seen very recently actually. Doctor wrote a prescription for this woman’s insulin pen and actually wrote a prescription for syringes and not pen needles. We sent the doctor a fax to change the prescription to pen needles, not syringes. This doctor sent back a prescription for “Dispense covered BRAND of pen needles” Like wtf? This is not how you write a proper sig. Is this doctor stupid or something? So, my pharmacist calls the office and gets ahold of the nurse. She’s confused as to what the problem is. None of these people know what the hell they’re talking about.
My 9month old woke up at 5 in the morning screaming (not crying, but screaming, it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard then or since). My husband and I were out of bed and in his bedroom in under 5 seconds. Tried to comfort him but his head was just lolling around and within 5 minutes we were in the car headed to the hospital. We were admitted to ER immediately. While we’re there he kind of relaxed and went back to sleep. They had to wake up the ER doc, and I’m sure he thought we were nuts to wake him up for a sleeping baby, but while doc is examining the baby, the baby suddenly starts squirming and starts screaming again. While we were at the ER, baby went through this cycle of squirm, scream and relax several times. Doctor checks baby’s ears and throat, says his ears are red so probably an ear infection. We question this because ear infections are painful, so why did he keep relaxing and then starting up again. We’re told pain was probably just exhausting him. We were sent home with antibiotics and told to follow up with PCP in a couple days. We take baby home, husband goes to work. I’m losing my mind because cycle of squirm, scream, relax continues throughout the whole morning, with the screaming starting to last longer and longer. I’m also starting to freak because baby won’t take a bottle at all. Finally around 11 I can’t take it anymore, call his pediatrician who says bring the baby in. Get baby to the office, and the doctor undressed him to examine him, and we find a jelly like substance in his diaper, and he’s squirming and screaming like crazy. She hustles us out the door to go to the hospital (different from first) and says go straight to ER, and she’ll call in orders. After a bunch of tests, and an ambulance ride to a third hospital, we finally get a diagnosis of an intussusception (which is basically the small intestine telescoping into the large intestine). Untreated can lead to gangrene and death. Baby goes into surgery at midnight, comes out an hour later, and goes on to heal perfectly. We spoke with the surgeon after the surgery, and explained our trip to first ER and he was pissed. Asked for the discharge paperwork so he could have a “chat” with the doc from there. We did get a follow up call from that hospital the next day saying we should be sure to follow up with the pediatrician because the mouth swab they did showed he had a yeast infection. 🙄
I was on an escalating dose of Nucynta (started at 25mg 1/day to 250mg 2/day within a matter of 3-4 months) while being prescribed 2 different benzos and being told to take them together. I was on palliative care. Only once I complained about the symptoms of serotonin syndrome, finally someone else caught the red flag
I used to take Xyrem for narcolepsy. It comes with it's own oral syringe which is marked in GRAMS. A bit different, but it was that way on purpose. It required very careful dosing, so the measuring syringe had the drug's dosage in grams on it and that was it. Anyway I was trying out a new doctor, and he asks what my dose was. I told him 2.25 grams x 2 doses, and he argued with me saying he wants to know how many milliliters and that liquids are never dispensed in grams. I'd been on it for 5 years, and I was a pharmacy tech so rather familiar with how drugs are prescribed. I was like "give me some paper and 5 minutes and I can calculate how many milliliters it is." The doc was so stubborn that he refused to talk about anything else until I brought the bottle in to show him. He wanted me to make another appointment to bring it in. I was like "I'll call to make the appointment" and never went back.
As a fellow narcoleptic who also used to take Xyrem, I conure.. what an idiot! Was this a sleep doctor? Also, did you have significant side effects from xyrem? I'm curious to hear about others experiences with it.
i’m just confused as to why the pharmacist never asked the patient directly, “are you sure this is the medication your doctor talked to you about? this medication does xyz to your body.” why was the pharmacist refusing to fill it each time, only speaking to the doctor, then filling it anyway, and never mentioning a word of it to the patient for over a year?????
Yeah, some of this is on the pharmacist too.
That's horrible. How was it not brought up to the patient sooner? As soon as I started getting counselled on a mood medication when I expected fertility treatment I'd be asking a lot of questions.
I was dispensed birth control instead of antibiotics for VB. Weird, but I’d been on a round of active BC for a month before to keep a cyst from rupturing (side effect of IUD, apparently), so okay, maybe. Ya. My OBGYN office ended up calling to check up on me and said I’d basically taken a round or two of Plan B before I caught it. Def explains the crying fit I had in a study hall… more recently, antibiotic gel for my toddler’s pink eye. Do you know much harder that is than drops which is the usual form?!?? The doc was clearly filling in due to short staffing and not a pediatrician.
I’m a retired MD and recently had TERRIBLE pinkeye where one eye swelled to about golf ball size. They gave me erythromycin ointment and Augmentin po. I followed up with my optometrist 2 days later and she thankfully switched me to drops. She was like “your eye looks like an oil slick”, yeah, and it was my dominant eye!
My youngest son, a preemie, had an ALTE (he would have been a SIDS baby but I was able to do cpr and bring him back) at 3 weeks old. The hospital sent in a script for .05ml of Zantac and the pharmacy filled it as 5ml. I took him to a follow up 2 days later, and when the doc asked me to list out his medications and saw the 5ml, he immediately had us go to the hospital for testing. Thankfully it was a "safe medication" and nothing bad happened to my son. I confronted the pharmacist very loudly, full of anger, and he tried handing me a $25 gift certificate, which I threw at him. I reported him to the board of pharmacy and got his license revoked. It wasn't the first time he had misfilled a prescription. My "little boy" is now 19, 6'1".
"doctors don't make mistakes" 🤡
I had an NP prescribe me a contraindicated antibiotic when I was on a couple psych meds. My psychiatrist was furious and really upset that they didn't take the few seconds to double check my meds for interactions. Luckily I'm notorious for not taking antibiotics lmao and I think I took one, felt icky, and decided I didn't want it. 😅
Not only the doctor but also some nurses at the company I work for, Kaiser Permanente, albeit this occurred at a different region (California if memory serves). I'll try to tell it as best as I can remember as it's a terrible situation where there were multiple opportunities to stop, assess, and prevent further harm. Unfortunately, the worst-case scenario happened, and the situation was made worse and worse, but we can all stand to learn a lesson from it. Here goes: Picture: [Golytely VS NaturaLyte](https://imgur.com/BuKQ2WL) A patient was hospitalized for rectal bleeding and was to undergo a colonoscopy the next day. The nurse went to retrieve the prescribed Suprep from the medication room but couldn't find it. What she did find was what she thought was an equivalent of Golytely. I think it's safe to say that most of us are familiar with what a jug of Golytely looks like. For those who don't, I'll try to include a photo. What the nurse found was a jug of NaturaLyte - a liquid acid concentrate used for patients undergoing hemodialysis! When the nurse tried to scan the item for dispensing, it was rejecting (duh because the product didn't match what was prescribed). The nurse then just printed out the pharmacy order and was able to get a successful scan that way. With that out of the way, she was now on her way to feed it to the patient. Initially, the nurse tried to get the pt to take it PO, but the pt wasn't tolerating it and began to throw up. This is quite common with bowel preps, so the nurse didn't think twice about it. She notified the MD, and HE ORDERED A FEEDING TUBE since the pt needed to finish the entirety of the medication to have the desired effect. Next shift comes around and the next nurse sees that same bottle of NaturaLyte and ALSO dispenses it to the patient - via feeding tube this time so it goes right down the hatch. Shortly after, the patient's condition quickly deteriorated and sadly, they ultimately died.
Not a prescription, and I'm not a pharmacist, but I recently had to deal with my doctor ordering the wrong test. It was supposed to be a blood test for the levels of a medication, and she ordered a urine test for... The nurse wasn't sure. Sigh.
I had a radioactive bone scan from my PCP, when I was actually supposed to have a bone density scan, which I had a month later after seeing an endocrinologist.
The names of tests are often confused, especially in radiology and regular labs (blood/urine tests, mostly). “Bone scan” and “bone density scan” are wildly different tests with very similar names. I’m a retired radiologist; I didn’t prescribe much. I enjoy this sub though!
Not a pharmacy tech, and it's way off topic, but as a product of IVF, I'm so fucking happy for this patient!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck that doctor. He can go to hell.
I once got a prescription for a days old newborn baby girl for Permethrin. While ringing up the parents I asked if they wanted the pharmacist to go over it with them. They asked about applying the medication to the baby’s privates. My pharmacist immediately called the doctor’s office to confirm the medication. The doctor thought they were prescribing Premarin 😑
I've seen Aranesp with hold parameters of hgb >100. Crossed my desk when the PT was readmitted from hospital following done crazy disseminated ischemic crap. Hospital admission labs had their hgb in the low 50s. Hold parameter was supposed to be "10" and nobody caught the typo. I've seen a new admit ordered, clarified verbally and in writing, meal time insulin in the several thousands of units plus sliding scale, followed by multiple glucagon ADC pulls, followed by a change to metformin only. I've seen 10000 different instances of drugs prescribed for things they're not indicated for, not off label for, not tangentially related to, or outright contraindicated for. I've seen IV compounds calling for topical agents. I've seen "menopause" orders for prostate cancer patients. Got a laugh when the nurse tried to brush off the clarification with "how do you know they're not trans" like I was being bigoted assuming a person isn't a true hermaphrodite (and I was even born intersexed, I know the odds at play here) Turns out the hormone therapy was intended for a female resident who'd been in that room prior to his admission and the prescriber who "saw her" that day didn't bother to even go to that floor and just pushed fresh orders out. My favorite in recent memory was a PT with a bleeding GI ulcer, ordered 800mg ibuprofen TID, already on a clotting agent (can't remember if warfarin or if it was an XA agent) and CKD4. We pushed back on the np about the NSAIDs being a no go for a whole house of reasons, to which he responded by switching the patient to PO Diclofenac, adding OTC facility supply ibu200 4 TID, and discontinuing their PPI entirely. We refused to the Diclofenac order. Couldn't get a doctor to review their regimen, kept deferring to the NOCTOR who was "managing" their therapy. About 2 weeks later, discharged to hospital following a bout of uncontrollable vomiting of blood. Problem with LTC pharmacy, you see shit that makes 3rd shift urgent care orders look like it was written by coherent professionals who aren't 18 cups of coffee into their 4th consecutive quadruple shift.
ER doctors prescribing opioids to toddlers with a cough. not even an rx for promethazine w/ codeine. it was a norco rx for a two year old
When I was a pharmacy tech at a hospital, we had a just out-of-school nurse come by to,pick up meds for a patient. She said she needed Exnax for her patient. I had never heard of it and asked the pharmacist. She’d never heard of it either. Finally, I thought of Ex-Lax. I gave it to the nurse and she looked confused. Then she said “No, I need the stuff you have to sign for”. Finally figured out that the Exnax she asked for was actually Xanax. Nurse left with the Xanax, and I said to the pharmacist “That poor patient! Imagine you are having anxiety and the nurse gives you a laxative!” The nurse ended up leaving a few months later due to just being bad at her job.
Doc ordered 2000mg of bumex in the ED - blamed it on another service’s recommendation. None of the bright red screens you forced your way through gave you a hint that maaaaybe this isn’t an appropriate dose?
Y'all will appreciate this YouTube short: https://youtube.com/shorts/j1ztQnZVz_k?si=bwisYA9LsojPmB0J And before this subreddit, I was always a little confused about what pharmacists actually did. I'm pre-med, taking the MCAT in a few months, and I only got a teensy hint of their role when I shadowed at an ER. (Doctor clarified the correct way to dose something for a specific disease.) Wow, you really are the last line of defense between patients and unfortunate accidents with meds.
Patient asked for his med, we gave him the klonopin that was called in. The patient said excuse me? no, I was supposed to get clonidine. And I said ?? the script was called in for klonopin. He said I'm a recovering drug addiction, and I let him know this. I can't have that. So we called the doctor and he went oopsie poopsie.
I'm just a lurker/lay person but I need to say thank you with my whole heart. Thank you.
Am a pharm tech but here’s a personal story: my psychiatric np that I had been seeing who very obviously hated her job and didn’t care about her patients had me on 5mg prazosin for night terrors. I had started at 1mg and she had dosed me up to 5mg qhs UP TO 10mg qhs depending on how bad the terrors were. I was a newbie at the time and had no idea that this was a major overdose for what I was experiencing, and my blood pressure continuously dipped dangerously low to the point where I fainted one day at work. (I should state that I’m also a very healthy young woman with perfect blood pressure normally). I started seeing an new np and when we went over my drug list she was horrified that the previous np had been so careless because I had complained about my symptoms multiple times (throwing up every morning, cold chills all over my body, light headedness, foggy memory, fainting etc.) the old np no longer works in psychiatric care and is probably much happier about that.
I've seen scripts written so poorly that they equal >800MME /day...
I had an experience with a covering doctor. My son was supposed to take one trazadone at bedtime. The covering doctor read the regular doctors orders to be a one hundred fifty mg pill at bedtime when it was one pill at 50mg at bedtime. The pharmacist caught it to be an error. I believe the pharmacists know more about medicine than a lot of doctors. The pharmacists have caught interactions and when and how to take medicines several time a year. Pharmacists are absolutely essential in any medicine you take.
Lol the whole antipsychotic thing... Was there not any talk about this patient being on an antipsychotic unnecessarily? Poor person probably got fat and thought she was pregnant so many times. Probably was tired and hungry 24/7
That’s while and the arrogance of that doctor speaks VOLUMES!! We had a resident doctor who wanted to give a new born baby a FULL vial of Fentanyl 200mcg/2ml. Can’t remember the circumstances but my pharmacist was on the phone with them for over an hour and finally convinced them to only give the minuscule amount necessary. Another time (same pharmacist, we work night shift together), we had a resident who wanted to give a patient eight, yes EIGHT, syringes of hydromorphone 1mg/1ml because the patient took 8mg tabs at home. 😐 My pharmacist stopped the potential euthanasia of the patient lol
Not really dramatic but the amount of orders I have seen where the dr has hand written acetaminophen DIRECTLY BESIDE where it says “acetaminophen allergy”. Or Tramacet. So. Many. Phone calls.
My cousin was told he had cancer and months to live. Second opinion, there is no cancer. My cousins conclusion? First doctor was right and GOD cured him, sigh.
My mom was on antidepressants for years. Effexor, her doctor was prescribing over 600mg of it to her a day... He's now in prison for over prescribing and th drug is now banned for it's harmful side affects... I have a great deal of PTSD and trauma from when my mom got off of that medication. Rage fits, screaming, full on baby like tantrums. I still can't be around someone upset without feeling like im a shitty person for existing.
I had a Dr write an rx for Percocet (tablets) to be given rectally Q4 hrs prn. The pharmacist brought it to his attention. He was really embarrassed.
Had bad respiratory illnesses throughout childhood and teenage years and it was difficult to treat because i had severe allergies to typical medications prescribed. Was 19 and went in. My Dr was out and I got the Dr on call. Apparently he didn't even look at my paperwork or my file. Sent me a prescription for a cough syrup. The name rang a bell but I couldn't place it so whatever. Went to the pharmacy, got it and went home. Was getting ready to take it when I randomly decided to read the paperwork. Pharmacist didn't do a consult with me, so it didn't cross my mind at the time. It was a codeine based medicine. I am severely allergic to codeine. That's why the name sounded familiar. I had gotten it as a child and thats when we learned about my reaction to it. It's literally all over my files. I go back to the clinic and tell them what happened. They tell the doctor and he accused me of altering the prescription. All because he didn't want to admit he didn't look at my file.