Hospital apologises, changes procedures after mixing up patient’s prescription
Prachin Buri’s Kabin Buri Hospital admitted to have dispensed the wrong medicine to a patient and promised to adjust its system to have two pharmacists, said hospital director Dr Chokchai Manadee via a phone interview on Friday.
In future, one pharmacist would dispense the medicines and another would recheck them before handing them out to patients.
Chockchai was responding to a Thai social media user’s post on Thursday afternoon claiming that her mother – suffering from a sore throat and coughing – was given a rash-soothing lotion, which she duly sipped as instructed. The mother noticed a strange taste and odour compared to her usual cough syrup and found out from the label that it was not the correct medicine.
The post garnered public criticism, 4,200 “likes” and was shared by 5,100 people.
“In this case, the doctor prescribed the correct medicine but the mix-up during dispensing was because the two medicines – one is a cough syrup and the other is a rash-soothing lotion – had similar packaging,” Chokchai said.
The patient’s relative had already switched to the correct medicine and received an apology by the pharmacist responsible for the mix-up, said Chokchai.
The patient was not harmed and the hospital had already reported the error to the Public Health Ministry, he added.