Healthcare is an essential part of every life, and something you depend on to stay in the best of health. When a medical professional messes up, it can result in serious injury, or even death as an experienced medical malpractice lawyer, like from Wieand Law Firm, can explain. If you were administered the wrong medication by a nurse, you might wonder what you can do. The following are a few avenues you may be able to take.
Suing the Nurse
If the nurse was the individual who messed up, you can typically sue the nurse. Perhaps he or she failed to read your chart correctly. Maybe the nurse picked up the wrong bottle or confused your medication with another patient’s medication. Nurses are human, and do make mistakes, but you shouldn’t have to suffer because of his or her mistake.
Suing the Doctor
There’s a chance the nurse did everything he or she was told to do. Maybe the doctor prescribed a certain medication, and the nurse administered that exact medication, with the prescribed dose, and at the prescribed frequency. Later, you discovered it was the wrong medication, but the nurse obviously wasn’t at fault. You might be able to sue the doctor for prescribing the wrong medication.
Suing the Hospital
Perhaps the nurse wasn’t properly trained on all the protocols for administering medication. Maybe the cabinet or refrigerator where the medications are stored isn’t organized very well. Perhaps the hospital is overloaded, or requires the nurses to work too many hours. These can all be issues that lead to improper administration of medication, and liability would fall on the hospital and the staff of the hospital.
Suing the Pharmacist
While rare, there’s a chance the wrong medication was put into a bottle with a certain label. While the nurse might think he or she is giving the patient one type of medication, he or she could be administering something entirely different. This would typically be on the shoulders of the pharmacist who filled the prescription.
Suing Multiple Parties
There’s a possibility you could sue multiple parties if you were given the wrong medication. For example, the doctor may have prescribed the wrong medication. That would make him or her liable. The nurse may have noticed the mediation was wrong for the condition of the patient, but went ahead with administering it anyway. You might be able to sue both the doctor and the nurse.
Asking a Lawyer for Help
Just because you were given the wrong medication by a nurse, doesn’t always mean he or she is at fault. Ask a medical malpractice lawyer for help in knowing where to turn when you are given the wrong medication by a medical professional.