New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

 According to a study, Spanish-speaking persons in the United States may be at a high risk of injuries because of prescription translation errors. Researchers at the Nemours/Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del found that many of these errors were serious, and could lead to grave misunderstandings.

According to the researchers, most of these prescription errors occur because of problems with the software that most pharmacies use to translate prescriptions from English to Spanish. These computer programs do a barely adequate job, and the resulting translations can be full of errors.

The researchers surveyed pharmacies in the New York area, and found that four out of every five pharmacies surveyed, translated prescriptions from English to Spanish using computer programs. All the pharmacies admitted that they rechecked their translated prescriptions by using Spanish- speaking pharmacists. However, the researchers were astounded to find that even in spite of this manually checking, there were a large number of errors on the prescriptions.  

Part of the problem with using a computer program to translate prescriptions is that the software translates one word at a time. When you consider each word in the translated version, you would think that the software does a pretty good job. However, when you consider an entire sentence, or a couple of lines of instructions translated from English to Spanish, the meaning in the translated version is completely different from the original version. This creates a lot of confusion, and there's plenty of scope for misunderstandings.

The researchers suggest that pharmacies hire more Spanish-speaking staff to help translate English prescriptions. Another recommendation is that Spanish-speaking patients take along English-speaking friends or relatives, to help them translate the prescription.

Scott Grossman in a New Jersey pharmacy error lawyer, representing injured victims of prescription and pharmacy errors in Monmouth, Bergen, Passaic and Ocean Counties, and across the state of New Jersey.

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An Ohio pharmacist is serving a jail term of 6 months in a fatal pharmacy error that killed a two-year old child.

I have blogged on this tragic story earlier. In 2006, Emily Jerry was receiving treatment for cancer at a Cleveland Hospital. She was due to leave the hospital after her treatment, and was getting a last round of chemo. However, a pharmacy technician at the hospital mixed the chemo drug with a saline solution that was more than 26 times the prescribed amount. Emily fell seriously ill as a result of the error, and died three days later. 

The pharmacist on duty at the time, had failed to catch the mistake. That pharmacist, Eric Cropp is serving a 6-month jail term. His pharmacist’s license has also been revoked. A piece on CNN shows the pharmacist as heartbroken and “teary” over the incident. The fact is however, that an innocent little girl was killed by a preventable error. Emily was ready to go home. Her parents had even planned a trip to Disneyland to celebrate her coming home free of cancer. Like her parents say, it would have been different if Emily had died of cancer. But she died at the end of her treatment program, from a horrible error that left her on life support for the last few hours of her life.

It’s hard to imagine that anything good could come out of this tragic death, but Emily’s parents have found a way to do just that. They have managed to use their tragedy for the greater good. They spearheaded efforts to pass Emily’s Law which was signed in 2009.  The law requires that prescription errors be reported to the Ohio pharmacy board, and that there be a limit on the number of technicians under a pharmacist’s supervision.

Scott Grossman is a pharmacy error lawyer representing injured victims of pharmacy errors in New Jersey and nationwide.

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A  Minnesota Health Department investigation has confirmed that a New Brighton nursing home resident died as the result of a pharmacy error. The man received the wrong formulation of an anti fungal medication, leading to kidney failure and preventing the resident from receiving proper treatment for fungal pneumonia and cancer.

The drug Amphotericin, is available in four formulations. The traditional formulation tends to have a toxic effect on the kidneys. The victim had been prescribed a different formulation of Amphotericin, but the pharmacist supplied the traditional formulation to the nursing home. It appears that the pharmacist was not aware that there was more than one formulation of the anti-fungal drug. The error was only discovered a couple of days later during a quality review. However by then, the victim has already begun to suffer from health complications. He was taken to hospital just four days after receiving the over dosage, and suffered kidney failure. He died soon after. The nursing home here was not found not at fault because the drug was mislabeled as the prescribed drug.

Last week, I blogged about a new national pharmacy error alert system that gives me some hope that preventable tragedies like these do not occur again. The American Society of Health System Pharmacists has collaborated with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices to launch a national alert system to prevent medication errors. The system will monitor serious medication errors that take place around the country, and will inform the ISMP network of approximately 35,000 pharmacists, as well as other health care professionals of the error, via email. The alert will come with a complete description of the error that has occurred, as well as guidelines to prevent these from occurring at the hospital.

It’s too early to say how successful this national alert system will be, but as a pharmacy error lawyer, I fervently hope that the system will prevent the kind of errors that have contributed to the death of this Minnesota victim.

If you have had any experience with pharmacy errors in New Jersey, l want to speak with you in connection with a special TV report on pharmacy errors. Please contact me at my office.

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The family of a man has filed a lawsuit against a Rite Aid store in Michigan alleging that a medication error that occurred at a local pharmacy, contributed to his death.

The victim John Sheridan, an attorney, developed melanoma on his back in 2007. The cancer quickly spread to his brain.  In September that year, Rite Aid issued a dose of a chemotherapy drug Temodar, which was much higher than his recommended dosage. According to the prescription, Sheridan was to take 14 capsules daily of Temodar.  That was roughly 10 times the normal dosage and almost double a fatal dosage. Rite Aid failed to spot the error, and filled out the prescription. Sheridan unwittingly took the high dose, which contributed to his cancer developing rapidly. Within the next month , Sheridan was dead.

The doctor who issued the prescription has since settled with the family out of court. Sheridan’s family has filed a lawsuit against Rite Aid for issuing the lethal dose of Temodar. The family insists that the Rite Aid pharmacist should have noted the prescription error, and should have contacted Sheridan’s oncologist to inform him of the error. They failed to do so, contributing to the rapid deterioration of Sheridan’s health, and finally resulting in his death just a month later.

When you undergo treatment for an illness, you expect that doctors, nurses and pharmacists in charge of your health are completely accurate in their diagnosis and treatment.  You depend on their sense of responsibility because as an ill person, or the loved one of a patient, you really don’t have a choice but to place your trust and faith in the hands of the doctor or pharmacists. The Rite Aid pharmacy here had a golden opportunity to correct a serious medication error

If you have had any experience with pharmacy errors in New Jersey, l want to speak with you in connection with a special TV report on pharmacy errors. Please contact a pharmacy error lawyer at my office.

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More than 2 years after her death, the parents of a two-year-old girl have succeeded in their personal crusade - the passing of an Ohio bill that would help reduce the kind of pharmacy errors that were responsible for her death.  Emily Jerry died in March of 2006 after a hospital pharmacy technician compounded a chemotherapy drug, with a saline solution that had up to 26 times more salt than was needed for the treatment.

Emily had been diagnosed with an abdominal tumor, and had had been undergoing chemotherapy at the Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland. The cancer was almost gone, and her parents were looking forward to taking her home. A trip to Disneyland to celebrate the disappearance of the tumor had been planned, and all that was needed to say goodbye to the hospital was one last round of chemotherapy. Instead, Emily woke up after the treatment in severe pain and vomiting violently. She died three days later. It was later that the pharmacy technician's horrible pharmacy error came to light.  

The technician was not charged because there are no regulations for pharmacy technicians in Ohio. She faced no disciplinary action. In her statement, she maintained that she had voiced her doubts about the composition of the solution to the pharmacist on duty that night, and he had "shrugged it off."   Just before mixing the drug, the technician had apparently been surfing the Internet planning her wedding. The pharmacist, who was on duty at the time of the tragic mistake, has been indicted on charges of reckless homicide and involuntary manslaughter.  

Now, a bill that was inspired by Emily's tragic and utterly preventable death has been approved by the Ohio state legislature. Emily's Act will seek to establish stricter regulations for pharmacy technicians, who will now be required to have at least a high school diploma, pass a state pharmacy proficiency exam and undergo criminal testing before they can show up for work.

There are two tragedies here – Emily's death, and the fact that it took the loss of a 2-year-old's life to wake up to the fact that too many patients were being subjected to the dangers posed by untrained and uninformed pharmacy technicians.    For hospitals looking to cut their overheads, it makes cold financial sense to have a number of technicians who are responsible for checking dosages, and placing the medications into containers, because they can get by with paying them a lower wage. Senator Timothy Grendell, the bill's sponsor admitted that he had faced "resistance" from pharmacies over the proposed measure that would mean higher salaries for trained technicians who met the new standards. 

In New Jersey, we're currently facing the prospect of a law that would limit a pharmacist's liability in the event of a mistake, so it's great news to have much needed legislation pushing for better standards elsewhere in the country.   

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Earlier this week a story on ksl.com, a Utah television station, reported that an eighteen-year-old honor student received a potentially lethal dose of oxycodone for strep throat and has been in a coma since April 30. The teen, Jessie Scott of Draper, Utah, was given a teaspoon of concentrated oxycodone hydrochloride for pain due to strep throat, when the actual prescription called for a five-milligram dose. The Wal-Mart pharmacy that filled the prescription, was supposed to dilute the concentrated medication before dispensing it to Jessie, but it failed to do so. Jessie received 20 times’ the prescribed dosage due to Wal-Mart’s negligence. As of a result of the pharmacy’s horrific error, a few hours after taking the lethal dose, Jessie Smith’s organs began to fail, he was placed on a ventilator, and one of his lungs collapsed.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Jessie Scott and his family.

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Pharmacy error, mistake, negligence… whatever you want to call it, is becoming a national epidemic. How many more babies and young people have to get injured or die before something is done to address it? Last week, yet another report filed in Texas of newborns receiving an adult dosage of Heparin, the blood thinning medication, leading to terrible tragedy, only this time, the babies did not survive. Unlike the overdose that occurred involving actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins, the Texas overdose was not due to a labeling error, rather, it was apparently due to a mixing error by a hospital’s pharmacy. That hospital was Christus Spohn Hospital South in Corpus Christi, Texas. According to a recent AP article, on July 4, 2008, 17 newborns received 100 times the appropriate dosage of the drug. Of the 17, two died, three were released, and the remaining 12 are in the hospital’s NICU.

Kiii.com, a television station in Texas, further reported that the premature twins, a boy and a girl born to Eric and Erica Garcia, were transferred to Christus Spohn after birth  and allegedly died from the Heparin overdose. While the hospital is not admitting responsibility for the twins’ death since they were born four weeks early, they are investigating the matter. It is of note that two of the staff pharmacy employees have taken temporary leave.

Our hearts go out to the Garcia family during this difficult time.

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You have read on this blog my ongoing reporting and analysis of the epidemic of pharmacy errors and the threat to the public that it poses. Well here is a variation on the theme.  Today it was announced on NJ.com, that retail pharmacy chain Rite Aid settled a lawsuit with New Jersey for $475,000 for selling expired over-the-counter medications along with expired infant formulas and baby food. According to the article, 42 Rite Aid stores were found selling expired items throughout New Jersey. If the chain, which also includes Eckerd stores, fails to comply with the terms of the settlement over the next year, it faces an additional $175,000 in penalties.

 Once again, I implore the public to be extra vigilant when shopping at these pharmacies. It is bad enough that we are forced to defend ourselves against prescription errors at the hands of pharmacists and their technicians; now simply going to the shelves for Tylenol or a can of Similac has become a potential health threat to us as well.

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