Florida Medication Injuries
If you are similar to most people, you trust your doctor to prescribe you the appropriate medication and your pharmacist to administer the drug in the correct amount. After all, they are trained medical professionals, and medical professionals have a legal responsibility to be thorough and careful when prescribing and administering medicine. Unfortunately, doctors, pharmacists and major drug companies do not always live up to their end of the bargain. Medication errors can cause tremendous harm, and even death. If you have been the victim of a harmful error, you need to act quickly, please contact an experienced Tampa pharmaceutical injury attorney today.
Identifying Medication Errors
Medication errors, often referred to in the medical community as ‘adverse drug events’, are a major national problem. According to a recent review of Federal Drug Administration (FDA) data, the National Academies of Science concluded that at least 1.5 million harmful medication errors occur in the United States each year. The report also suggested that the number might actually be significantly higher due to chronic underreporting. There are many different factors that lead to medication errors, including:
- Unsuitable medication being prescribed by a doctor;
- Incorrect medication being administered by a pharmacist;
- The wrong dosage being prescribed or dispensed;
- Doctors failing to take into account other medications that are already being taken by the patient;
- Inadequate effort being made to determine a patient allergies; and
- The drug itself being too dangerous to be on the market.
Any one of those issues can cause a serious injury, or even death. The two most frequent concerns are the wrong dosage being administered and the wrong medication being prescribed. Together, those two issues account for more than 66 percent of all fatal medication errors.
Proving Negligence in a Medication Injury Case
Your Florida medication injury attorney will need to establish each of the four elements of negligence.
- Duty: The medical professional, or drug company, had a legal responsibility to look out for your safety.
- Breach: They failed to live up to that responsibility.
- Causation: There is a causal connection between their breach and your harm.
- Damages: You sustained actual harm because of the error.
In the majority of medication injury cases, breach is the most difficult element to prove. If you were harmed by a medication, it does not necessarily mean that any other party did anything wrong. There are some cases where no one could have reasonably foreseen the harmful effects that a drug would have on a specific patient. However, most harmful medication errors are entirely preventable. Every medical professional, and company, involved in distributing medication needs to use the correct process. If any of them fell short, in any aspect, of the process you will be able to establish a breach of the duty of care.
Contact an Experienced Tampa Pharmaceutical Injury Attorney
Victims deserve full and fair compensation for the damage they have suffered. The experienced and compassionate pharmaceutical injury attorneys at The Pawlowski//Mastrilli Law Group can help. We have extensive experience holding negligent parties accountable. Please do not hesitate to contact our Tampa office today at 813-242-4404 to learn more about how we can help protect your rights.
