Hospital staff should be able to follow doctor’s orders and administer proper medication to all of their patients. Unfortunately, errors happen, and patients are sometimes given the wrong medication or the wrong dosage. If this happens to you, here’s what you need to do about it.
Alert the Hospital Immediately
As soon as you’ve discovered that you’ve been given the wrong medication, you need to alert the hospital. If you are still in the hospital as a patient and you’ve actually taken the medication, you should be monitored. Make sure that you let the staff know if you feel like you are having any side effects from the medication.
Consider Suing for Medical Malpractice
When you are in the hospital, you are putting a lot of trust in the staff. If you’ve been given the wrong medication at the hospital, you may want to consider suing them for medical malpractice. There really is no excuse for being given the wrong medication, and you may have suffered because of it.
Let Your Doctor Know
You need to let the doctor know if you were given the wrong medication. Nurses tend to be the ones that administer medication, and they may not let the doctor know that you were given the wrong one if they don’t see the doctor before they leave for the day.
You may have been given the medication because the doctor prescribed you the wrong one or because a nurse accidentally gave you the wrong medication. It’s important that you tell your doctor about it so that they can ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Talk To a Patient Advocate at The Hospital
Many hospitals have patient advocates that are there to make sure that patients are treated properly and that their voices are heard. After you’ve been given the wrong medication, you need to talk to the patient advocate. They will want to know the details about what happened so that they can try to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
Being given the wrong medication while you are in the hospital can have a lot of consequences. If you have been given the wrong medication, there’s a lot that you can do about it. It’s important that you let others know, and you may even want to consider suing for medical malpractice as well.
