Crowson Law gives insights on Medical Malpractice – Medication Prescription Errors

If a doctor prescribes the wrong medication to a patient and the patient ends up being harmed as a result, the patient may be eligible to bring a medical malpractice claim. However, medical malpractice claims are very complex from both a legal and medical standpoint. This article will discuss proving medical negligence in cases where a doctor prescribes the wrong medication to a patient. 

It is important to realize that a doctor is only liable if he or she is the one who actually made the mistake. Therefore, in instances when a mistake is made by someone else such as a pharmacist or drug manufacturing company, the doctor is not liable. An attorney from Crowson Law Group stated that, “while this is easy to point out, it can be a pretty complex detail to prove; like any medical malpractice action, in order for the lawsuits to be viable you have to prove that the doctor’s actions actually amounted to medical negligence”. 

In order to prove medical malpractice related to prescribing the wrong medication, it means that the patient must prove that the doctor was negligent and will need to establish the following:

What the medical standard of care was under the circumstances
How the doctor deviated from that standard, and
How the patient was harmed as a result

It is important to realize that the first thing that needs to be established is the ‘medical standard of care’. This is usually established by an expert witness with experience in the same medical field as the doctor who wrongly prescribed the medication. The medical standard of care is generally defined as “the type and level of care that a healthcare professional with the same training and experience would provide under similar circumstances in the same community”. Therefore, the medical standard of care is “the yardstick against which to measure the propriety of the doctor’s decision to prescribe the medication in question and his or her conduct in connection with that decision”.

Thereafter, it would be necessary to show precisely how the doctor failed to meet that standard of care when treating you. Such proof will be provided usually by the testimony of an expert witness. In this testimony, the witness will show what exactly your doctor did or failed to do, that was not in line with the proper course of conduct under the circumstances.

Once the above is proven, one must show that the wrongly prescribed medication actually caused some kind of injury to the patient. This could be in the form of newly caused health problems or worsened existing health problems. A Crowson Law attorney stated that “with respect to an injury from wrongly prescribed medication, the injury needs to be serious enough to warrant taking a patient’s time and going to the expense of filing a lawsuit against the doctor”.

Some examples of where doctors sometimes make mistakes when prescribing medication include the following:

The wrong dosage
Incorrect instructions for taking the medication
The wrong duration for which to take the medication
Medication which contains an ingredient(s) which the patient is allergic 
Medication that will harm the patient because of the patient’s other underlying medical conditions
Medication that is ineffective and causes the patient’s underlying or untreated condition to worsen
The doctor fails to relay the drug manufacturer’s warning of risks and side effects to the patient necessary for informed consent

If you believe that you suffered harm from being prescribed the wrong medication, find attorneys in Anchorage Alaska https://www.crowsonlaw.com/anchorage-law-firms/ who handle medical malpractice matters.

About the company:

Crowson Law Group is a law firm of renowned professionals that focus on personal injury matters. It was named in a Newsweek listing of the best personal injury law firms https://www.crowsonlaw.com/alaska-personal-injury-lawyers/ in Alaska. For more information contact Crowson Law Group, today.

Address: 637 A St.
Anchorage, AK 99501
Email: james@crowsonlaw.com
Phone: (907) 677-9393
Fax: (907) 677-9310
website: https://www.crowsonlaw.com/

This release was published on openPR.