More Brilliance At Your Local Pharmacy

[Enigma869]

Unreal! All of these fuckers need to go back to school for reading lessons

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/08/pr ... tion-drug/

[Saint John]

While there's absolutely no excuse for the pharmacist's error, this dumb ass should be confirming her name is correct and that it's the right medication, especially while knocked up.

[bluejeangirl76]

While there's absolutely no excuse for the pharmacist's error, this dumb ass should be confirming her name is correct and that it's the right medication, especially while knocked up.

Agreed. No they should not have made such a grievous error to start with, but yes, you ALWAYS check your labels before you ingest anything. I even count them to make sure they gave me the amount I'm supposed to have, and I damn well read the label before I even pay for it.

Granted they could have easily put the wrong label on a bottle that contained someone else's Rx, and she'd have never known, but that obviously isn't what happened. This was a totally preventable situation and she is definitely responsible to some degree.

[Saint John]

you ALWAYS check your labels before you ingest anything.

Somebody should have told this to Freddie Mercury.

[brywool]

Okay, does anybody think of "It's a Wonderful Life" with this post??


(pharmacist putting the wrong stuff into the bottle, he was wasted, kid Jimmy Stewart points it out....)

[Saint John]

Okay, does anybody think of "It's a Wonderful Life" with this post??


(pharmacist putting the wrong stuff into the bottle, he was wasted, kid Jimmy Stewart points it out....)

Wow ... great recollection, Bry!

[conversationpc]

My dog ate a prescription awhile back...Stupid ass dog didn't bother reading the label, either.

[Don]

I think between me, my wife and my son, we have gotten prescriptions from the drug store less than a dozen times over the last 20+ years.

Even with those limited exchanges, I'm pretty sure that every time, they told me to check the label on the bottle to at least verify my name and the instructions for the dosage, and that's even when I went to different pharmacies.

[Saint John]

I think between me, my wife and my son, we have gotten prescriptions from the drug store less than a dozen times over the last 20+ years.

Even with those limited exchanges, I'm pretty sure that every time, they told me to check the label on the bottle to at least verify my name and the instructions for the dosage, and that's even when I went to different pharmacies.

Walgreens actually goes so far as to put a picture of the pill on their directions for use. I think that's a great idea and I always read the usage statement and verify that the pill is the same name, color and shape as the one that I was prescribed!

[Rhiannon]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

[Don]

Was it the pharmacist who actually handed the prescription to the customer or a clerk/asst? The woman says it was the pharmacist but as she didn't even notice the different name on the container, I'm not taking just her word for it.

[conversationpc]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

Yeah, way to go on that one.

[Don]

Another question would be if the error was noticed when the other customer approached about her prescription (the one handed to the wrong woman). Wouldn't standard procedure be to immediately call the previous customers and see if they were given the wrong container?

[bluejeangirl76]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

Insert obligatory Fox News joke. Except this time it's not funny and there's just no defending that. Absolute fail.

[Saint John]

19 years old, Mexican, unmarried and having a baby. Shocking!

[brywool]

Okay, does anybody think of "It's a Wonderful Life" with this post??


(pharmacist putting the wrong stuff into the bottle, he was wasted, kid Jimmy Stewart points it out....)

Wow ... great recollection, Bry!

I can remember crap like that all day. But ask me something important and I pretty much drool on myself...

[Don]

19 years old, Mexican, unmarried and having a baby. Shocking!

Well, it all makes sense now. Even I can't tell the difference from one beaner to the next.

[Saint John]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

Insert obligatory Fox News joke. Except this time it's not funny and there's just no defending that. Absolute fail.

To be fair, the 19 year old unwed, but soon-to-be mother, mentioned it in the interview. Here is the original interview done by the local Fox affiliate:


FORT LUPTON, Colo. -- Having a baby should be a joyous time in one's life, but a 19-year-old Fort Lupton woman is filled with fear and uncertainty about her unborn child.

A pharmacist at a Fort Lupton Safeway at 1300 Dexter gave the wrong drug to the mother-to-be.

It's a potent drug that could harm or even kill her child.

"This will be our first baby. Yah, it'll be my first baby," says Mareena Silva and her boyfriend Christopher Castillo.

Silva is 6 weeks pregnant.

She was supposed to get antibiotics at the Safeway pharmacy, but the pharmacist accidentally gave her a prescription for another woman with a similar name.

"I didn't notice it didn't have my name on it because the lady's name is really similar to mine. It's Maria and mine is Mareena," she says. The two women share the same last name.

And that mistaken prescription was for methotrexate, a medication used to treat cancers.

The pharmacist told her to bring back the medicine. When she arrived, he told her to throw up the pill.

It had been about 25 minutes since she'd taken it.

"My doctor called immediately and said you need to get to an ambulance. I'm sending one to Safeway," she says.

Silva later learned methotrexate can cause birth defects in an unborn baby. She said that the drug is also used to cause abortions in troubled pregnancies.

The manufacturer warns that some people have died after taking this medication every day by accident.

"That's my biggest worry…is the baby being healthy and my baby surviving through this whole thing," says Silva.

Safeway's Public Affairs Director Kris Staaf released this statement:

We are "....very concerned about how this happened and we are conducting a full and complete investigation. Safeway has pharmacy systems and processes in place to prevent this kind of occurrence.

"We have a well-earned reputation for reliability and safely filling prescriptions and we will continue to work diligently to ensure our procedures and polices are being followed at each of our pharmacies."

"I'm angry. But there's not much I can do about it. I just wish I caught it sooner," says Silva.

The CU School of Pharmacy says it teaches its students to confirm with customers their street address or date of birth. That way, they make sure they are giving the right medicine to the right person. Silva says the pharmacist did not ask her these questions.

She says the pharmacist even told her the drug he was giving her was not good for a pregnant woman. And she said that's what the hospital prescribed. So, it must be okay.

"But I thought he was talking about the antibiotic," she says.

Safeway says it is sorry for the mistake and it will pay for Silva's medical expenses.

[Rhiannon]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

Insert obligatory Fox News joke. Except this time it's not funny and there's just no defending that. Absolute fail.

To be fair, the 19 year old unwed, but soon-to-be mother, mentioned it in the interview.

They could have (and should have) edited that out for privacy reasons and still maintained cohesion of the story, though. That's why it's irresponsible. Irresponsible interviewee notwithstanding.

[bluejeangirl76]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

Insert obligatory Fox News joke. Except this time it's not funny and there's just no defending that. Absolute fail.

To be fair, the 19 year old unwed, but soon-to-be mother, mentioned it in the interview.

I see you point, but no, it doesn't look like the pregnant girl said that...

FORT LUPTON, Colo. -- Having a baby should be a joyous time in one's life, but a 19-year-old Fort Lupton woman is filled with fear and uncertainty about her unborn child.

A pharmacist at a Fort Lupton Safeway at 1300 Dexter gave the wrong drug to the mother-to-be.

It's a potent drug that could harm or even kill her child.

"This will be our first baby. Yah, it'll be my first baby," says Mareena Silva and her boyfriend Christopher Castillo.

Silva is 6 weeks pregnant.

She was supposed to get antibiotics at the Safeway pharmacy, but the pharmacist accidentally gave her a prescription for another woman with a similar name.

"I didn't notice it didn't have my name on it because the lady's name is really similar to mine. It's Maria and mine is Mareena," she says. The two women share the same last name.

She said their first names were similar, thus the confusion. The writer added the fact that their last names are the same. That could have and SHOULD have been left out.

Hmm... my sister in law is a journalist... I'm going to ask her what she thinks of that.

[Saint John]

Well played on the part of the local Fox network including the full name of the woman whose meds she ended up with. I'm sure that lady is thrilled everyone knows her prescription business. Responsible journalism fail.

No worries. Just a quick search on Infospace.com yielded 16 Maria Silva results just within the Denver city limits. Good thing she's Mexican and not Greek. I doubt you'd find that many results for a Greek guy named Achilles Tendinitis or Harry Pairatestes.

[Archetype]

I guess looking at labels has gone out of style

[Saint John]

it doesn't look like the pregnant girl said that...

Give the reader some fucking credit. By only mentioning the the slight variation in their first names, it's pretty easy to infer that they share the same last name. What did you think her last name was ... Schwarzenegger?

[Rhiannon]

No worries. Just a quick search on Infospace.com yielded 16 Maria Silva results just within the Denver city limits. Good thing she's Mexican and not Greek. I doubt you'd find that many results for a Greek guy named Achilles Tendinitis or Harry Pairatestes.

I truly doubt all 16 Marias (Marii?) get their hooch from the Safeway on 1300 Dexter in Fort Lupton, as the article is so kind to inform us of that also. Poor Maria's neighbor, Wilma Balzdrop is canvassing the beauty parlor with all sorts of salacity at this very moment regarding which condition the medication treats Miss M. Silva actually suffers from.

[Melissa]

Oh good grief have to love the media, methotrexate is not just some "abortion drug", it's primary use is in cancer patients, mainly kids with leukemia if I remember right, as well as a bunch of other things. But yep, she should have reviewed it before leaving. Sure, pharmacies have systems in place for checking (and should be double checking too), but they are people, and people make mistakes. She better learn that before her baby needs it's first RX.

[Don]

If it's not been quoted in La Opinion, there's not much danger of anyone in the migrant community making it major topic of discussion at Avila's Beauty Salon.

[Saint John]

If it's not listed in La Opinion, there's not much danger of anyone in the migrant community making it major topic of discussion at Avila's Beauty Salon.

[Melissa]

And while I agree Fox news messed up (like they're the only ones who ever do? ), I can totally see how the name mess up would have happened, as someone who has to deal with this crap at work all the time, and pharmacists who weren't even trained here, have accents, and I'm just guessing this chick has an accent too, lol. Not too hard to see how that would happen unfortunately. I lose IQ points every time at work I have to talk to the pharmacists around here from one particular pharmacy that starts with a W and rhymes with balljeans. I can hardly understand a word half of them say, and then have to repeat myself so much and so slowly sometimes that I'm practically drooling and catatonic by the time I get off the phone with one of those idiots, lol.

[bluejeangirl76]

it doesn't look like the pregnant girl said that...

Give the reader some fucking credit. By only mentioning the the slight variation in their first names, it's pretty easy to infer that they share the same last name. What did you think her last name was ... Schwarzenegger?

I wasn't discrediting the reader. I read the same thing you did... but I took it as this girl is derp enough to merely glance at it and confuse the similar first names and that's what it was based on, and it doesn't necessarily indicate they have the exact same surname, only that the label was similar enough. If she didn't bother to check the drug I'm not going to assume she read the whole thing correctly.

[Angel]

it doesn't look like the pregnant girl said that...

Give the reader some fucking credit. By only mentioning the the slight variation in their first names, it's pretty easy to infer that they share the same last name. What did you think her last name was ... Schwarzenegger?

I wasn't discrediting the reader. I read the same thing you did... but I took it as this girl is derp enough to merely glance at it and confuse the similar first names and that's what it was based on, and it doesn't necessarily indicate they have the exact same surname, only that the label was similar enough. If she didn't bother to check the drug I'm not going to assume she read the whole thing correctly.

But a lot of drugs have similar names and it can be confusing to people. Especially because your doctor may tell you the name of the drug they are giving you but they may use the brand or generic name and you may be given the other-some drugs have many different names for the same thing. So for example if this patient was given a prescription for metronidazole and was given methotrexate, the names are similar enough that I can see how she would think she was given the correct drug and the pharmacy just spelled her name wrong. I think the pharmacy is entirely to blame. Having said that, YES, check labels, if the drug name is similar but not the same as what you were told you are getting, ask to make sure you have the right drug!!!!!! Especially at that place that rhymes with balljeans!!! Like Melissa, I've had more problems with them than all other pharmacies combined!