Pharmacists Make Mistakes. You Can Protect Yourself. (Published 2020) (2024)

Lynne Calloway had been taking a newly refilled arthritis prescription for a few days when she mentioned she wasn’t feeling well.

So her husband, Joseph Calloway, did some investigating. When he looked up her medication in a book detailing prescription drugs, he said, he discovered that she had been given the wrong one.

A CVS in New Jersey had mistakenly dispensed a chemotherapy drug, he said, that could be used to treat arthritis, but only when taken at limited frequencies — commonly a single dose a week. Mrs. Calloway had been taking her medication twice a day.

Pharmacy errors come in various forms, and many pharmacists at retail chains across the country are increasingly worried about making mistakes, an investigation by The New York Times found.

[Read The Times’s investigation.]

They say they are juggling too many tasks without enough help. One pharmacist acknowledged making 10 to 12 errors a year — “that are caught” — in an anonymous letter to the South Carolina Board of Pharmacy.

While patients cannot control what happens behind the pharmacy counter, they can be on the lookout for errors. These simple steps can help.