This guide examines the potential causes of medication errors and what steps you could take should you be given the wrong medication. Additionally, we investigate when making a medical negligence claim could be appropriate.
When prescribing or dispensing medications, healthcare professionals owe their patients a duty of care. This means that the medical professional must act in a way that prevents you from coming to unnecessary harm.
Causes of medication errors guide
Medications can carry risks, however, in some circumstances, this cannot be avoided. For example, you might take a medication you need that carries side effects, or you could suffer an allergic reaction because of an allergy that you didn’t know about.
We provide a breakdown of how compensation is valued. Additionally, we explore examples of figures you could get for specific illnesses or kinds of harm related to being given the wrong medication.
To conclude, we will look at No Win No Fee arrangements. This is a way of funding the work of a lawyer, and we examine how this could benefit you and when it could be offered.
Contact our advisors with any questions:
- Call 0800 652 3087
- Use the live chat
- Start your claim online
Select A Section
- What Is A Medication Error?
- Common Causes Of Medication Errors
- Why Medication Errors Could Breach Duty Of Care
- How Do I Prove What Caused A Medication Error?
- What Could You Claim For Negligent Medical Care
- No Win No Fee Claims For The Causes Of Medication Errors
What Is A Medication Error?
As a patient, the healthcare professional prescribing or dispensing your medication owes you a minimum standard of care. A medication error is a mistake made with medication. Examples can include:
- The wrong prescription being handed over.
- Adverse effects occur when taken with other medications where this can be anticipated and is unnecessary.
- Overdose.
Causes of medication errors could include medical negligence. An adverse reaction may occur when taken with another medication, for example, if the healthcare professional did not check what other medications the patient was taking. This could be down to poor note-taking as well.
If the healthcare professional treating you did not provide you with a minimum standard of care while dispensing your medication and you were harmed as a result, you might have a valid medical negligence claim. We investigate what you need to prove in medical negligence claims later on in this guide.
You can speak to our medical negligence claims team if you experienced a medication error that caused you harm. They will be able to tell you if you could have a valid claim.
Common Causes Of Medication Errors
Causes of medication errors could occur at any stage of dispensing or administering the medication.
Examples of causes of these errors include:
- Dose error: The wrong dosage being administered could result in adverse effects. Too high a dosage could harm the patient, and too low a dosage could see the dose be ineffective.
- Frequency error: some medication needs to be taken at a set time. If you are on one of these medications and are not informed about when to take this, you could be harmed.
- Substitution error: the medication you may need could be out of stock and substituted for another medication by mistake. Medications may also have names that are spelled similarly which could also lead to a substitution error.
Speak to our medical negligence claims team about claiming if you were given the wrong medication as a result of negligence. You can get in touch 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Medication Error Statistics
A study about medication error published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on 25 September 2020 estimates 237,287,788 medication errors during one year in England.
It estimated that:
- 72% of incidents have little or no potential for harm
- 66 million have potential clinically significant
- 38.4% of overall instances occurred in a primary care setting
- Of the instances that had the potential to cause significant harm, 34% happened in a primary care setting
Why Medication Errors Could Breach Duty Of Care
As some causes of medication errors could be prevented by providing you with a minimum standard of care, you might be able to claim medical negligence compensation. As part of a clinical negligence claim, you must prove:
- The healthcare professional owed you a duty of care.
- Negligence occurred when this duty of care was breached.
- You experienced harm as a result of the breach of the healthcare professional’s duty of care.
Additionally, time limits apply when claiming medical negligence compensation. Under the Limitation Act 1980, you are generally given three years to start a medical negligence claim. This means that you typically have three years from the date of the negligence or three years from the date that you became aware that the negligence resulted in harm.
There are some exceptions to this time limit, though. Contact our medical negligence claims team to see whether these apply to you.
How Do I Prove What Caused A Medication Error?
Steps you might take following a medication error could help support a clinical negligence claim. Firstly, you might wish to seek medical attention. Medical records could include information about how the wrong medication injured you and what treatment was then given. These could be submitted as evidence.
Other steps you could take include:
- Requesting medical records.
- Keeping a symptoms diary.
Following a medical error, you may wish to seek legal advice. A specialist medical negligence solicitor could help gather evidence to support your medication error claim. Our medical negligence claims team could put you in touch with a No Win No Fee solicitor with experience in clinical negligence claims.
What Could You Claim For Negligent Medical Care
If the causes of medication errors could be proved to be due to a breach in the duty of care owed and you were harmed as a result, you may wish to know how much a medical negligence claim could be worth. Medical negligence claims could be made up of two heads; general damages and special damages. Further detail on each head is provided below.
General Damages In Medical Negligence Claims
In this first head of your claim, you are compensated for the injury you suffered. The table we’ve provided contains a sample of figures from the latest edition of the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG). To help calculate a figure reflecting an injury or illness, legal professionals will use the JCG.
| Injury | Severity Level | Potential Compensation | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kidney | A | £169,400 to £210,400 | Serious damage to both kidneys. This is permanent. The bracket also includes loss of both kidneys. |
| Bladder | A | Up to £184,200 | Double incontinence. |
| Reproduction system | Male | £43,010 to £88,750 | Permanent sexual dysfunction or impotence in someone with children or who wouldn't have had children. |
| Reproduction system | Female | £56,080 to £71,350 | Infertility but without sexual dysfunction or other aggravating features in a young person without children. |
| Bowels | C | In the region of £79,920 | Urgency and incontinence that persists even after surgery. |
| Lung disease | D | £31,310 to £54,830 | Breathing problems that require frequent inhaler use. |
| Psychiatric harm | Moderate to severe (b) | £19,070 to £54,830 | Difficulties coping occur, but the future is more optimistic than found in more severe cases of psychiatric harm. |
| Digestive system | Illness (b) (i) | £38,430 to £52,500 | Severe toxicosis that causes hospital admission and some continuous symptoms. |
| Taste and smell impairment | Both taste and smell (a) | In the region of £39,170 | Both the senses of taste and smell are lost in their entirety. |
| Epilepsy | Other epileptic conditions (c) | £10,640 to £26,290 | Temporary resurgence or 1-2 discrete episodes. |
Special Damages In Medical Negligence Claims
In this second head of your medical negligence claim, you could recover costs incurred due to the medication error. You will need to prove your expenses, such as with receipts or invoices.
You could recover:
- Loss of earnings.
- Additional medical expenses.
- Home adaptations.
- Carer costs.
Contact our medical negligence claims team with any questions you have about damages.
No Win No Fee Claims For The Causes Of Medication Errors
Did you know that you could fund the services of a specialist medical negligence solicitor with a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA)? You might have heard of CFA under the umbrella term No Win No Fee.
A No Win No Fee solicitor won’t charge an upfront fee. A legally capped success fee is taken from your award if your claim is successful to cover your lawyer’s services. If you aren’t awarded a settlement, then you won’t make a payment to your lawyer for the work that they have done.
Free legal advice is available from our medical negligence claims team. If you wish to proceed with a claim and it seems like it could be eligible, you could be passed onto our panel of No Win No Fee medical negligence solicitors.
Talk to them today about the causes of medication errors and the harm these errors have caused you:
- Call 0800 652 3087
- Use the live chat
- Start your claim online
Find Out More About Common Causes Of Medication Errors
Additional information about medical negligence:
- Complaining to the NHS
- Government Guide to Health and Social Care Services
- Requesting Access to Your Medical Records
Further guides from Medical Negligence Assist:
If you have any more questions about causes of medication errors, speak with our team today.
Writer Danielle Bibby
Publisher Fern Stiles