Q. It is essential that patients take a proactive role when interacting with their doctors, especially when it comes to medications. Here is my story.
As soon as my doctor walked into the exam room I let him know about my bladder infection. He immediately started writing a prescription for me.
I asked, “what medicine are you prescribing?” Without even looking up from his clip board, he paused, said, “uh, ah uh, Nitro-bid.” I said, “Oh, that sounds like heart medication with the word Nitro.” Again Not looking up, he just mumbled, “huh, uh no.”
So I took the prescription, got it filled & took it for 6 days. I had a migraine headache for 6 days!
I went back to the clinic almost a month later to say I’ve still got the bladder infection. The nurse pulled my chart. She then shifted her weight & blurted out, “Why did he give you heart medication!?” I said, “I asked him!…”
He was gone on a month’s vacation. She told me what day & time to call back & she’d put me through to him to tell him. When I called back I asked him, “How was your vacation? It’s good that you had time with your family.” Then I told him about the prescription.
There was dead silence; no “oops, OMGosh or sorry” from him…so I said to him, “Wow, wouldn’t that have sucked to have come back from a nice, relaxing family vacation to find out that you killed one of your patients!?”
He mumbled, mumbled, mumbled…”uugghh”!
Needless to say, I’m more proactive with my health care & especially prescriptions. I thank God for the health professionals in this world, but they are only human and mistakes can happen. If we’re proactive while showing respect to our caretakers…we can work together with them for our active health care.
A. Wow. You asked the right question, but clearly your doctor was not paying attention. He must have been quite distracted to prescribe a heart medicine for a bladder infection. Nitro-bid is indeed nitroglycerin for heart patients. One of the most common side effects of this medication is a very bad headache, so we’re not surprised that you experienced migraines while taking it.
This was a serious medical mistake and one that should have been prevented by either the doctor or the pharmacist. This is one of the reasons that we wrote the book, Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them. In it we describe the
Top 10 Screwups doctors make when prescribing:
- Failing to disclose drug side effects
- Creating obstacles to reporting symptoms
- Ignoring drug-induced symptoms
- Overriding medication alerts
- Being oblivious to drug prices
- Not knowing actual drug effectiveness
- Relying on surrogate markers
- Not checking for drug interactions
- Not staying up to date on new research
- Not reporting drug problems to the FDA
We provide in-depth solutions to these mistakes in the book. We also provide the top 10 questions to ask your doctor when you get a prescription:
1. Is there another way to treat my condition besides this drug?
2. What is the evidence that this drug will produce a meaningful
outcome, not just change numbers on a test?
3. How likely am I to get a benefi t fr om this medication?
4. What are the most common side eff ects?
5. What are the most serious side eff ects?
6. What symptoms require me to contact you immediately?
7. How can I get through to you promptly?
8. How long do I nee d to take this medication?
9. How should I take this drug–with food or without, morning or
evening?
10. Are there any special instructions for stopping this medicine?
For anyone who would like to learn more about how to prevent medical mistakes here is a link to our book. We hope it can prevent the kind of problem this person experienced.
Share your own story in the comment section below.
