Republished November 5, 2024
It should never happen, but sometimes it does - another person's prescription medicine is put into your bag before you pick it up at the pharmacy. Bagging errors can happen when more than one person's medicines are in the pharmacy work area at the same time. In most cases, pharmacy staff are supposed to work on one person's prescription at a time. The work area may get cluttered if a lot of prescriptions need to be filled. And sometimes, if the same medicine is needed for two different people, those prescriptions may be filled one after the other. This is when mix-ups can occur. Nevertheless, if the bag containing the prescription medicines is not opened at the point-of-sale (when it is being picked up), if an error happened it may not be caught before leaving the pharmacy.
Here's what you can do: Tell the pharmacy staff your address or birth date to help ensure the correct prescription bag is given to you. It's not at all uncommon for two people with similar names to medicines waiting for pickup. Be sure to look at the bag to make certain it has your name on it. Then, once you are sure it is correct, open the bag and look at the label on each medicine container, before you leave the pharmacy. Make sure your name is on each container. If something is not right, was to speak to the pharmacist. We have heard from some people who haven't done this and when they got home, they took someone else's medicine.
