Pharmacists’ Errors Are Prescription For Disaster More Names Added To Growing List Of Druggists Who’ve Made Mistakes
State regulators this week added two names to a growing list of pharmacists who made mistakes on prescriptions this year.
Eight pharmacists have been issued citations for mislabeling bottles or giving customers the wrong medicine so far in 1995. Only two or three pharmacists are disciplined for prescription errors in most years.
“This is a concern of all of us,” said Jack Jones, a member of the state Board of Pharmacy. “Realize that when you’re dealing with humans, errors happen, whether we like it or not.”
Four of the 1995 errors reportedly made customers sick. No one died as a result of the mistakes, but one Boise-area man fell into a coma and was briefly hospitalized after a pharmacist gave him pills intended to treat diabetes instead of the anti-nausea drug he was supposed to get.
At a recent meeting in eastern Idaho, the Board of Pharmacy fined two pharmacists, one in Boise and one in Idaho Falls, for incorrectly filling customers’ prescriptions. Both customers recognized the pills were wrong and returned them to the pharmacy without swallowing any.
Two other pharmacists were disciplined for using their pharmacies’ drugs without a prescription.
They were not accused of prescription-filling mistakes, but one of them caused three car wrecks after swallowing potentially addictive drugs at work and then trying to drive home.
A Boise pharmacist accused of misfilling prescriptions has received two citations this year. Jimeel Ferris, who worked at a Pay Less Drug Store in Boise, was fined $500 for mixing up two drugs with similar names.
Earlier this year, he reportedly gave a customer a diabetic medication called glipizide instead of a new anti-nausea medicine called Propulsid.
The patient, who did not have diabetes, went into a coma and was hospitalized. He died five weeks later of cancer.
Ferris still is licensed as a pharmacist in Idaho, but Pay Less officials said he no longer works for them.