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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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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