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Medication Error at Wolverhampton Pharmacy

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Our client’s father was given the wrong medication by a Wolverhampton pharmacy, which not only resulted in him having high blood pressure for a number of months, he was also unable to fully engage with palliative cancer treatment.

Pharmacy Dispensing Error Claim

Pearson medical negligence solicitor Daniel Phelps secured a £2,000 settlement for the dispensing error.

In this case, we acted for the daughter on behalf of her father, who, prior to the incident, had a good medical history; he did, however, take Atenolol for hypertension.

Prior to his retirement, he had worked as a taxi driver and was a father to seven children.  He picked up his prescription as usual from the Church Pharmacy in Bilston, Wolverhampton.  He always received this in bulk and started taking it as usual.  After a period of time, he began to experience unusual feelings of tiredness, nausea, weakness and general malaise, and one time fell asleep in his car whilst parked outside the family home.

His GP could not explain the cause of his malaise, but a few weeks later, our client’s father was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He was only able to have one treatment for his cancer as his blood pressure was fluctuating at the time, and he was unable to continue the treatment.

Incorrect Medication

Whilst attending another hospital appointment, he fainted, and it was discovered that his tablets were not correct.  The box he had been taking his daily tablets from contained Allopurinol 100mg tablets and not the 100mg Atenolol prescription he was supposed to take.

His prescribed Atenolol is a beta blocker medicine used to treat high blood pressure (hypertension) and irregular heartbeats (arrhythmia). The medication he had been taking for some time was Allopurinol used to treat gout and certain types of kidney stones.

“In this case the box was correctly labelled, but a mistake had been made in dispensing the tablets, and incorrect medication had been given to our client’s father,” said medical negligence solicitor Daniel Phelps.

“In this case, a settlement was made, and the pharmacy accepted a breach of duty of care.  This dispensing error caused his blood pressure to go unregulated and he suffered a list of side effects unnecessarily,” added Daniel.

We secured an out of court settlement, and the case was conducted with the client via email and Zoom chats.

“A client does not have to live locally for us to act for them; here the client simply searched medication error solicitors and found that Pearson Solicitors had acted for a number of clients with similar issues and we were able to act for them,” said Daniel.

How can we help

Pearson Medical Negligence Solicitors have a wealth of experience handling a wide range of cases. For legal advice on dispensing or medication error, contact the team on 0161 785 3500 or enquiries@pearsonlegal.co.uk

Please note that the information and opinions contained in this article are not intended to be comprehensive, nor to provide legal advice. No responsibility for its accuracy or correctness is assumed by Pearson Solicitors and Financial Advisers Ltd or any of its members or employees. Professional legal advice should be obtained before taking, or refraining from taking, any action as a result of this article.

This blog was posted some time ago and its contents may now be out of date. For the latest legal position relating to these issues, get in touch with the author - or make an enquiry now.

Written by Daniel Phelps

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