A Manitoba couple is pressing to get more safeguards on how pharmacies supply medications after their daughter was a pill dispensed in a mart of drugs from buyers that had 10 times the dose that her doctor had prescribed.
“This is not just a ‘my bad stage’, this is a bigger situation,” said Kevin Barkley, the girl’s father. “Take the dose 10 times and you don’t get much variation there to stay alive.”
Barkley’s 10 -year -old daughter had a recipe for a two milligrams pill that ordered her to take daily.
CBC News has agreed not to share the name of the medicine to protect the girl’s medical history. But several medical magazines say that overdose in this type of drug can lead to drowsiness, hypertension, tachycardia, seizures and other problems.
When a family friend went to collect the medicine in a Drower Mart Mart de los Buyores at the Dominion Center of Winnipeg earlier this month, they gave him a bottle labeled and full of 20 milligrams capsules.
The family friend gave the girl a pill on August 13 while staying with them during a trip. Barkley said his daughter was lethargic and “passed out” most of the day after taking the medication.
The next morning, they gave the girl a new pill, but this time he vomited. His father said that the family’s friend contacted them and sent a photo of the pill to the girl’s mother.
“I simply panicked, my heart began to accelerate,” said Andrea Thidrickson, the girl’s mother, to CBC News. “The dose was much higher than it should have been … but I didn’t know how serious it could be.”
He contacted the Manitoba Poison Center and his daughter’s pediatrician, who urged Thidrickson to take the girl to the hospital as soon as possible.
“That’s when he was very afraid. Everything I could think was, ‘she will be fine.’ That’s my baby,” said Thidrickson.
In the Winnipeg Children’s Hospital located within the Center for Health Sciences, doctors told the family that the girl had overdose and with the medication that was already in her system for more than 12 hours, the only option was to wait for Barkley, Barkley said.
“I get my stomach and a little angry too, because it simply shouldn’t have happened,” said Thidrickson.
A medical report with CBC said the girl had normal vital signs and neurological function, but needed to be monitored in the hospital before being discharged.
The 10 -year -old girl recovered completely, but her mother said her daughter was so afraid to take the pill again that she was taken from the medication with the approval of her pediatrician.
Family waiting for change after ‘blank apologies’
The girl’s father said doctors were worried that her daughter’s heart slowed after overdose. But they said that the family was lucky because the girl’s body rejected the second pill and if she had not thrown it, she could have had a greater risk of entering into a coma and even dying.
“We are only trying to raise awareness, so this does not happen to someone else because it was very evident how easy our lives could have changed forever,” said Barkley.
Barkley said his family contacted the pharmacy, Loblaws Ltd. – Matrix company of Shoppers Drug Mart, and the Faculty of Pharmacists of Manitoba to inform the incident. Initially, only the owner of the Shoppers Drug Mart Mart’s store returned his calls.
“Immediately, it seemed that nobody made a big problem about it. No one really cared. We simply apologize blank,” Barkley said.
Then, after the couple talked about their case publicly, Loblaws and the University contacted them. Both apologized and told them that an investigation was ongoing.
A spokesman for Loblaws Ltd. said in a statement that the company “takes this matter very seriously” and has conducted an exhaustive investigation.
The statement also said that the “corrective measures” in the pharmacy where the medicine was dispensed have been implemented so that it does not happen again, but did not share details.
CBC has communicated with the Faculty of Pharmacists.
Regulatory body guidelines Let’s say that pharmacy managers should ensure that changes are developed and implemented to minimize the possibility of a medication incident.
The couple is presenting a complaint to the College of Pharmacists and Barkley said they will continue to press to leave the revision changes, especially because this type of errors are far from isolation.
Pharmacies in Manitoba reported 1,348 drug incidents between October 1 and March 31, according to the latest data available from a national repository.
Little less than two thirds of these incidents occurred during the prescription preparation and dispensation stages. Of the cases reported, 230 of them were with respect to the incorrect dose or the frequency of medicines.
No deaths were reported, but 96 patients suffered mild damage, six suffered moderate and serious damage.
Barkley would like to see pharmacies improve their workflow and include new steps to verify that an employee enters the correct information of the prescription to the system and dispenses the appropriate medication to the patient.
“There were so many ways in which this could have been caught,” he said, even at the time the recipe was read, the full bottling and the medication delivered to the client.
“It wasn’t and for me, that’s just a shameless negligence,” Barkley said.
“Two should verify it to see who is going to this medicine … and that dose should never have given a child.”
