My pharmacy made a mistake

[left-of-center2012]

I picked up some paperwork recently from Walgreens last week and, me being me, I didn’t look at it until today.

Under allergies, it listed (along with others) ‘morphine derivatives’ and I’m thinking “What’s that?”.
I’m not aware of having ever taken ‘morphine’ and don’t ever recall an allergy to it.

So I called my pharmacy and found out it’s pain meds like Tylenol 3, codeine, hydrocodone, etc.

I told the pharmacist I’m 71 and taken those off-and-on throughout my life and never had any allergy to them.

She said someone had just made a mistake and she’d take it off my file.
I told her I’m not happy with my pharmacy making mistakes and she said “We’re just human and we make mistakes.”

They’ve filled pain pills for me a few times, so I don’t know how/why this happened, other than someone pushed a wrong button, whatever.

But I don’t like my pharmacy making mistakes.
I always wonder about folks who can't advocate for themselves.

[tymorial]

1. Mistakes happen in medicine

There is no such thing as perfection. There are layers of safeguards to prevent mistake but they will happen. You wouldn't have been denied medication regardless. If your MD sent an Rx to the pharmacy for an opioid then the pharmacy would call to confirm and the issue would have been rectified. You simply beat them to the punch.

[Warpy]

2. Mistakes happen. Anything run by human beings is going to have a few mistakes

While we all wish health care workers at all levels were perfect at all times, this is generally not the case. That's one reason so many things are being automated, on the theory that machines won't make mistakes. This is all well and good, but that assumes the people feeding the data into the machines are also perfect.

You caught the error. Had you not caught it, your pharmacist would have called the prescribing physician the next time you needed an opiate and it would have been caught then. Things are double and triple checked at all times because the people doing this stuff are human beings.

The health care system is the best way we have of getting well when we get sick. Is it perfect? No, because human beings are not perfect.