A mother on the island of Vancouver warns people to verify her recipes after she was accidentally dispensed by the powerful opioid hydromorphone instead of the medicine with regular ADHD of her child.
Like, BC, resident Sarah Paquin, 31, says she still shudders to think about what could have happened to her nine -year -old son if her husband did not realize that the medicine looked different before she gave it to her.
“It was scary,” Paquin said, standing in his front courtyard and playing with one of his three children.
“A small simple mistake like that could have ended horribly.”
A mother on the island of Vancouver warns people to review their recipes very careful after a close call for her son. As Maryse Zeidler reports, she and her husband discovered that her pharmacy accidentally dispensed the wrong medication.
Paquin says he did not think too much when he went to collect his son’s medications declan last week and that the personnel member of his local buyers Mart Mart Pharmacy did not review his identification or draw the recipe from the bag.
The next day, her husband was about to give her medicine to declan when she saw that the pills were a different color and shape of the normal.
Her husband looked at the bottle and noticed that the recipe was for another person, and that it was for hydromorphone. Immediately, he returned the pills to the pharmacy.
“Immediately your mind goes to the worst case,” said Paquin.
“The results could have been catastrophic and only makes my heart think about what could have happened.”
Hydromorphone is a powerful opioid that is two to eight times stronger than morphine is often used to treat acute pain or chronic cancer pain.
According to the Mayo Clinic, it can cause unwanted serious effects or a fatal overdose on children.
Human error
CBC News contacted Loblaws, the company that owns Drug Mart.
In a written statement, the company said the incident was a case of “human error” that should never have happened.
“We have controls to minimize risks like this, where the patient received the incorrect prescription bag, and the associate will review them with employees to avoid a similar situation in the future,” said the company.
Paquin says that since then he has heard the pharmacist, who apologized a lot. She says that he acknowledged that the steps were lost and that the standards were withdrawn, and told her that the employee who gave the medication was suspended pending internal investigation.
Asking for responsibility
Despite its guarantees, Paquin has filed a complaint with the BC Pharmacists College
“The pharmacy must assume responsibility, be responsible for what happened,” he said.
In an email, the university told CBC News that this type of errors is taken very seriously.
“We have legal requirements in the statutes of the Law of Health Professions to prevent these occurrences, including mandatory standards for prescription preparation to guarantee the accuracy of the prescribed product and consultations for all recipes, to ensure that customers understand their medications, how to take it correctly and address any questions,” said the university.
As part of the pharmaceutical consultation with customers, they are obliged to confirm the identity, name and strength and purpose of the person, he added.
In 2023-24, the University says it received a total of 990 concerns through its admission process. Of these, 54 became formal complaints and investigations, 16 of which were related to medicines.
Paquin decided to share his terrible experience in social networks, to warn others to review their recipe before taking it.
“I’m afraid that it happened to us, but I am also a bit grateful that it has happened to us and we caught it because it could have been given to someone who did not realize and hurt,” he said.
