Practice

Blog

Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect

Medication Errors in Nursing Homes

Many nursing home residents take multiple medications on a long-term basis for a variety of conditions. The medications are ordered by the patient’s doctor and are given to be given to the resident by a nurse as ordered by the doctor. It is inappropriate for anyone other than a licensed nurse to administer medications to the patient.

Nurses are trained to check 5 things to before giving medication to a patient:

• Is this the right patient?
• Is this the right medication?
• Is this the right dosage?
• Is this the right means (i.e., pill, liquid, etc.)?
• Is this the right time?

Errors in any of those 5 checks can have devastating consequences for the health and well-being of an elderly nursing home resident, especially errors in patient identity, medication, and dosage – the most commonly made errors. Because nurses are not always familiar with the residents they see in a nursing home setting, many nursing homes have photographs of each resident on the tray in the medication cart corresponding to that resident. Errors is giving medications can be the basis of a nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit.

In addition to concerns about medication error in giving the medications to the patient, nursing home residents are also at risk of harm through medication interactions. When residents are taking several medications, including medications ordered by more than one doctor, there is a chance that the drugs will interact in a way that can cause harm to the resident. To prevent this, nursing homes must have a monthly review by a pharmacist of each resident’s medication regimen. If the pharmacist recognizes that the medications the resident is taking have the potential for harm, he must alert the patients physician so that the medication regimen can be modified. The failure of the pharmacist to perform a proper review can be the basis of a pharmacist malpractice case as well.

Medication errors can have serious consequences for nursing home residents, often requiring extensive hospital care or even resulting in the wrongful death of the nursing home resident. As experienced Chicago personal injury lawyers, we know that one of the first places to start analyzing a nursing home medication error case is in the five questions above.