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Jul 17, 2025 Blog, Medication Errors

Prescription Drug Errors: Who Is Responsible?

Prescription drugs are prevalent in the U.S. and across the globe. As of 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved nearly 25,000 drugs. And approximately 65% of adults over the age of 18 reported having used prescription drugs in the past year.

Medication errors rank as the most frequent and avoidable source of patient harm. In part, this is because they can occur at a number of points in a patient’s healthcare, ranging from the prescription phase to the actual drug administration. According to the World Health Organization’s publication, “Medication Errors: Technical Series on Safer Primary Care,” these are a few of the factors that are associated with an increased risk of medication errors in the healthcare setting:

  • Lack of therapeutic training or inadequate knowledge.
  • Poor communication by doctors.
  • A language barrier between healthcare professionals and patients.
  • Increased workloads of healthcare professionals.
  • Interruptions and distractions in a healthcare setting.

Medication Errors and Patient Harm

Prescription drugs can be powerful tools when prescribed and used properly, but what happens when a drug is prescribed incorrectly? What might be the consequences, and who should be held accountable? Drugs prescribed in error in a variety of ways:

  • Patients can be given the wrong drug.
  • Doctors can fail to ask about a patient’s allergies.
  • Health care professionals can fail to identify harmful drug interactions.
  • Medical professionals and pharmacists can dispense medication to the wrong patient.
  • Pharmacists can mislabel the prescriptions.
  • Medical professionals or pharmacists can specify the wrong dosage, especially for children or older adults.

Taking medication that should not have been prescribed, or prescribed in the wrong dosage, can lead to a number of serious ailments, including:

  • Overdoses
  • Seizures
  • Heart palpitations
  • Allergic reactions
  • Organ damage
  • Stroke
  • Coma

Contact Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm

One wrong pill. One careless mistake. That’s all it takes to trigger a medical emergency. These errors often happen because of a medical professional’s carelessness, poor communication, or other negligent behavior. And if it happens to you or someone you love, you have the right to file a medication error lawsuit. You may be entitled to recover economic damages, non-economic damages, and, in particularly egregious cases, punitive damages.

You typically have just two years from discovering the error to file your medical malpractice lawsuit, so don’t delay. Contact a Fort Lauderdale medical malpractice attorney or Orlando medical malpractice lawyer at Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm for a free and confidential consultation today.