<p>This morning, I opened a new package of one of the prescription drugs I take (generic Fosamax), and I discovered that the pharmacy had given me the wrong dose. I am supposed to take 35 mg tablets, and the pharmacy’s label says 35 mg, but the actual package of pills says 70 mg on it.</p>
<p>It’s disconcerting to realize that of the five prescription drugs that I take for various things, this is the only one that comes in its own packaging – and therefore the only one where I would have spotted an error like this. If the pharmacy had gotten one of the other four drugs wrong, I would never have known it. If the pills looked different, I would simply have assumed that I had received a generic from a different company than usual.</p>
<p>Do you do anything to verify that your prescriptions are correct? I feel as though I should be doing something to double-check the pharmacy, since obviously they are as fallible as the rest of us, but I don’t know what I should be doing.</p>
<p>If I receive a different pill than I am used to taking, I always question it. Look medications up online to see the manufacturers pills, and dosages. Do not automatically trust that your pharmacy has not made a mistake.</p>
<p>vlines, I did not know that there was a way of looking up generic pills online to see what they look like.</p>
<p>Can you give me a little more detail? For example, I take a generic beta-blocker, metroprolol (generic Toprol). If next month’s pills look different from this month’s, how would I go about determining whether the drug I received is the right stuff but from a different company or whether it’s the wrong medication?</p>
<p>The Safeway pharmacy once gave my H some kind of heart medication instead of his acid reflux medicine. I picked up the prescription and when he saw the pills, he asked me to take them back and double check that they were the right stuff. The pharmacy was clearly horrified and apologized profusely. I got the corporate pharmacy office on the phone and gave them grief. They said a substitute pharmacist was working that day, as if that was a good excuse. I told them I was reporting the mistake to the state Board of Pharmacy and I did so with an online form. I never heard back about it. The thing that freaked me out was that a heart patient might have gotten acid reflux medicine. Scary.</p>
<p>They go to the trouble of including a detailed description of your pill along with your prescription. Well, I actually went to the trouble of reading this detailed description, and noticed my pills did not fit the description. So I called the pharmacy, and it was… oh, uh, yes, our supplier has changed and we haven’t changed the literature yet. OK, so I got the right pills, but come on!</p>
<p>Puzzled, If you google “substitute pharmacist fatal error” you will get plenty of hits.</p>
<p>I did that NJres and it was horrifying. I should mention that this problem is not limited to big, busy chain pharmacies. One of my kids was given the wrong flu shot (regular one instead of H1N1) at an well-regarded independent pharmacy that serves the neighborhood with all the medical buildings in my area. Again, they apologized like mad, refunded the money, gave her the right vaccine a week later, etc. but beyond making a complaint to the board of pharmacies and making a scene at the pharmacy, there didn’t seem to be much I could do.</p>
<p>Pharmacists are overworked human beings and I feel pretty confident they don’t want to make mistakes. Mistakes by nature of the word are just that. In our family, we take very little prescription medication, but two members of our household take a daily script and when I pick it up, I always open the bottle, look at the medication and I count them. One pill my husband takes, costs me $3.12 a day and you can bet darn sure I make sure there are 90 in that bottle. But besides the cost, I always make sure that antibiotics have the correct count, etc. The doctor prescribed it for a reason and I just want to make sure it’s right. As a healthcare customer, you simply have to take control of your care.</p>
<p><strong>I also look at the vials on all shots given to my kids/self…I would never trust anyone to put anything in my/children’s arm that I did not verify was the correct stuff…now if only I could verify the maker of the stuff did it right…lol</strong>**</p>
<p>Thank you for all the good ideas and stories, everyone.</p>
<p>I have never checked the vials on vaccines, but I will start doing that. It’s a good idea.</p>
<p>I went back to my pharmacy, and they quickly switched the medicine to the correct dose. The two packages (this is a prepackaged blister-pack drug) are remarkably alike, but that doesn’t excuse the error. The pharmacist on duty didn’t seem to take the problem seriously enough, and this is the second error they have made with my prescriptions (the other time, they gave me the wrong number of pills), so I’m switching to another pharmacy.</p>
<p>Thanks again for all the help and the links to useful Web sites.</p>
<p>I guess I should disclose I am the way I am because I was the mom to two NICU babies, one being very ill and the first nurse I came into contact with gave me the low down on hospitals in general and is the one who drilled that “check everything” into me. If I ever had to leave the hospital (and it was very rare) I would read the heck out of the chart. I would also read the chart after the doctor told me what was going on that day just to make sure what he said was spelled out on the chart. I am sure I can be a nightmare to some nurses and doctors, but I don’t care :)</p>
<p>I’m not sure if this is done everywhere, but CVS includes right on their label a description of what the pill looks like. I also take generic Fosmax 35 mg, and the pharmacy label says: “This is a WHITE, ROUND-shaped TABLET imprinted with 637 on the front” (emphasis theirs). As you say, it comes in the manufacturer’s packaging so I can check it myself in this case. But it’s a nice safety feature for Rx’s that come in pharmacy bottles.</p>
<p>I can count at least four errors that our local CVS has made in the past few years. And yes, they are WAY over worked. Three of the four have involved the number of pills, however…charging me for a 90 day supply but only giving me 30. Thankfully, they’ve believed me every time, I guess because the pills have no street value.</p>
<p>I am going to switch to a CVS for just this reason. My husband uses a CVS and is very pleased with this feature. However, he is not pleased with the particular CVS he uses, which has made several errors in his prescriptions, so I’m going to try another one that is near my office but not his.</p>
<p>I’m a bit nervous about opening vials and counting pills because my hands shake a little (and in fact, I lose an average of three or four pills a month from my five prescriptions by dropping them on the floor while trying to get them out of the bottle). I don’t know what the insurance company would do if I spilled a whole bottle of pills while trying to count them.</p>
<p>" If next month’s pills look different from this month’s, how would I go about determining whether the drug I received is the right stuff but from a different company or whether it’s the wrong medication?"</p>
<p>Marian, the best way to avoid this is to only get the Toprol (non-generic) of this med, whose generics I believe have a history of recalls from different manufacturers. Be sure to differentiate the Toprol from the Toprol XL and the different doses.</p>
<p>parent1986, I would love to get the non-generics for just the reason you say, but I take five prescription drugs, four of which are available in generic form, and I already pay close to a hundred dollars a month in co-pays. The co-pays would be much higher if I insisted on non-generic forms of all five drugs. I can’t afford it.</p>