Imagine you are in the hospital being treated for a fairly serious illness. It’s treatable, and you will eventually feel better once a proper medication course is completed — but in the meantime, you’re dealing with some serious symptoms. Over the next few days, you’re continually fed little cups of medicine to help you deal with the sickness. They come out in a tray that is filled with 30 or 40 such cups because the nurse is distributing the medicine to numerous patients.
After a week or two, you feel better. You dealt with some side effects from the medicine, but you’re healthy again, so what’s the big deal?
Well, as it turns out, the hospital didn’t properly measure the amount of medicine going into those cups. You were actually getting incorrect doses of the medicine each time. Overall it didn’t matter because your condition was cured. But you did suffer some side effects, and if the dosages had been more erroneous, you could have suffered serious medical complications or your illness may not have been cured.
In such a scenario, the minute detail of properly measuring medicine doses becomes a very important and critical factor in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
We bring up this imaginary scenario in the wake of a new report that found that parents routinely give their children incorrect doses of medicine. Instead of measuring out the proper amount of medicine with a dropper or other measuring equipment that would ensure the correct amount of medicine, many parents used traditional spoonfuls of medicine. Though more convenient, the spoonful approach can result in medical complications.
Source: Boston.com, “Spoonfuls Can Lead to Medicine Errors, Study Finds,” Linsdey Tanner, AP, July 14, 2014
