Can Pharmacists Be Sued for Medication Mistakes?

Pharmacists play an important role in our health care system. They're entrusted to work alongside doctors and other health care professionals in dispensing medications, so pharmacists' mistakes can have significant consequences. In this article, we'll discuss when a pharmacist might be liable for causing harm to a patient, and what these kinds of medical malpractice lawsuits might look like.

What Are a Pharmacist’s Legal Duties?

In the modern health care system, the pharmacist’s job can go well beyond simply counting out pills and giving them out to a patient who is holding a prescription.

A pharmacist’s specific responsibilities to patients are a matter of state law, and those obligations differ from state to state. While some states still maintain the old view that pharmacists are only responsible for properly following a doctor's instructions related to prescription medication, other states take a much broader view of what a pharmacist is supposed to do.

Depending on your state’s law, a pharmacist might be responsible for the following additional tasks, other than just accurately dispensing the medication that is called for in a prescription:

• reviewing a prescription in light of the patient’s past medical history
• warning the patient of potential side effects from the medication
• screening multiple prescriptions from different health care providers to make sure that they can be taken together
• contacting the patient’s health care provider to advise them if, if, in the pharmacist’s opinion, the prescription would be harmful to the patient or multiple prescriptions should not be taken together
• keeping and referring to patient’s medical history, and
• offering to discuss the patient’s medication.

Can a Pharmacist Commit Medical Malpractice?

In most states, pharmacists are considered health care providers, which means they can be held to a lot of the same standards as doctors, nurses, dentists, and other health care professionals. It also means they can usually be liable for medical malpractice if:

• they act in a way that doesn't meet accepted standards of medical care, and
• a patient suffers harm ("damages") as a result of that sub-standard care.

In other states, the position of pharmacist is considered a "profession," and a harmful mistake might lead to a claim of "professional" (not necessarily "medical") malpractice.

Let’s look at some of a pharmacist's responsibilities in more detail, and in the context of things that could go wrong and lead to a pharmacist's liability for medical malpractice.

Pharmacist Liability For Dispensing the Wrong Medication

Whether it's dispensing the wrong medication entirely (contrary to what the doctor prescribed) or dispensing the wrong strength of the proper medication, any pharmacist who deviates from the physician’s instructions and gives out the wrong medication is almost always going to be found to have committed medical negligence.

Even if somehow the pharmacist dispensed the wrong medication because it was mislabeled by the manufacturer, a jury may well find that the pharmacist should have caught the error. All pills are different and have different labels or codes stamped on them, and these days most of the prescription-filling process involves reliable software.

Obviously, if there was no manufacturer mislabeling, and it was the pharmacist who gave the wrong medication to the patient, the pharmacist will be on the legal hook.

Failing to Take a Patient’s Medical History into Account

Let’s say that the pharmacist works in a state that requires pharmacists to take a patient’s medical history into account when dispensing medication.

If, for example, the pharmacy’s records show that the patient is seriously allergic to a certain medication, the pharmacist would have a duty to refuse to dispense that medication to the patient. Instead, the pharmacist would be required to either contact the patient’s physician or instruct the patient to go back and see the physician. If the pharmacist fails to do either of these things and simply gives out the medication to the patient, the pharmacist could be deemed negligent.

Alternatively, let’s say this was the first time the patient visited this particular pharmacist. If the prescription was for a medication that has a serious and common risk of allergic reaction, the pharmacist might be required to ask the patient about his/her allergy history, or access the patient's medical history, to try to figure out if the patient might have an adverse reaction to that medication.

Failing to Screen Multiple Prescriptions

Let’s say that a patient is already taking three prescriptions from three different doctors when he shows up at the pharmacist with a fourth prescription from a fourth doctor. That pharmacist’s state might require the pharmacist to consult the patient's records and review all four prescriptions to make sure that the patient can safely take the fourth prescription in light of the first three. In that state, a pharmacist who fails to screen multiple prescriptions can be found negligent.

How Do I Prove That a Pharmacist Committed Medical Malpractice?

When it comes to proving that a health care provider's actions fell below accepted medical standards, most medical malpractice lawsuits depend on the testimony and opinion of qualified medical experts, and cases against pharmacists are no different.

Some mistakes, like transposing numbers on a prescription, or dispensing the wrong dosage, might be so obvious that an expert's opinion isn't crucial, but these cases can still be challenging on other liability fronts: Was the pharmacist's mistake the sole cause of the patient's harm? Did something (or someone) else play a part?

Learn more about what you need to prove in a medical malpractice case.

Others Might Be Liable For Harm Caused By a Prescription Medication

Pharmacists aren't the only ones who might be on the legal hook for harm caused by a medication. The doctor who wrote the prescription might face some amount of liability, and in some cases the manufacturer of an unreasonably dangerous drug could be sued under a "product liability" theory. Learn more about prescription medication errors and lawsuits over harmful prescription drugs.