Prescribing drugs to treat illnesses and other medical conditions is an important and serious business, which is why Georgia residents and people around the country entrust that task to doctors and other medical professionals who are trained and properly qualified to do so. Giving someone the wrong medicine, the wrong does of a medicine, or even a medicine that would be fine, but for a patient’s drug allergy or the other medications that patient is taking, can all lead to a patient’s experiencing serious and even severe medical complications. In the worst cases, patients may even die because of a medication error.
There are a number of types of medication errors even an experienced medical professional may make, but the important thing for Georgia residents to remember is that these errors are largely preventable.
Moreover, the person whom society has entrusted with the great privilege of prescribing drugs, that is, doctors, nurse practitioners and other professionals, should bear the burden of responsibility when something goes wrong because of a mistake.
For example, many errors happen because a doctor is distracted and being pulled in a number of different directions at once. As a result, he or she might not remember an important detail, like the fact a patient is allergic to that medicine. In other cases, a doctor might be operating under bad or limited information because the correct and complete facts were not provided.
While these sorts of things certainly are not intentional, a doctor can, and should, prevent them by emphasizing good communication, slowing down, reducing his or her patient load and asking important questions. If he or she does not do so, and a critical medication error is the end result, a patient may be able to receive compensation from the negligent doctor via a medical malpractice lawsuit.