Doublecheck Your Rx

Late last week, DD had an unfortunate run-in with a previously nonthreatening cat up in grandma’s neighborhood. The few puncture wounds on her face didn’t look so bad initially, and most had healed by yesterday. But this one spot, had gotten redder and more inflamed looking in spite of regular cleanings and treatments with ointment.

I asked a pediatrician friend to take a quick look at the place – better safe than sorry and good to know if we need to go to the doctor's office, I thought. Turns out, DD needs a heavy-duty antibiotic to knock-out the infection, so I was glad I asked.

But getting our prescription filled was an experience, and I learned a few lessons from it that I wanted to share.

1. Understand what the doctor is prescribing. I don’t mean just getting that the doctor wants you or your child to take an antibiotic. What antibiotic? Why that one? How many doses? For how long? Does the generic version have other names? In our case, the pediatrician was clear that DD needed Augmentin, a tough, knock-em-all-out antibiotic. She explained how often DD needed the medication daily and that she needed to take the entire 10-days’ worth of the medication.

2. Make sure you communicate that information to whomever is picking up the prescription. I had the conversation with the pediatrician; my husband picked up the Rx. I should’ve better communicated to him what he should be getting from the pharmacist. I didn’t.

3. Doublecheck your Rx. Look at the bottle, preferably when you get the prescription filled. Does it have the same name of the medication on it that the doctor prescribed? When I got home from work, I took a look at the medication my husband had picked up earlier in the day. The bottle read Amoxicillin, not Augmentin.

4. If the names don’t match, ask! Ask the pharmacist, “The doctor said she was calling in Augmentin. This says Amoxicillin, not Augmentin. Is this the same thing?” If you are already at home, call the pharmacist or the doctor and confirm if you have ANY doubt at all. Don’t trust the pharmacist to get it correct. Not that pharmacists are untrustworthy, but they fill hundreds of prescriptions each day. Mistakes happen. Clearly. Our pediatrician spoke personally to the pharmacist, she didn’t leave a message on their system, and she clearly prescribed Augmentin. When I called the pharmacy after talking with the pediatrician, the pharmacist double-checked the call-in, and confirmed that Augmentin had, indeed, been prescribed and that they’d made a mistake.

5. Don’t trust yourself to know. In our case, I just happened to have special knowledge about Amoxicillin because I take it every time I go to the dentist thanks to a diagnosis with a heart murmur as a small child. I just happened to know that Amoxicillin is NOT a tough, knock-em-all-out antibiotic and NOT the same as Augmentin. But even had I not known, I should have made that call to the pediatrician and then to the pharmacy.

In our situation, the consequences of a prescription error would have been negative, but thankfully probably not dire. DD, given an ineffective antibiotic, probably would have ended up in the hospital for an intravenous antibiotic to knock out the infection. She could have ended up with scarring on her face from the cellulitis caused by the infection.

The consequences may not always be so relatively minimal. Doublecheck your Rx. I know we will.