The family of a woman who died after she was prescribed an overdose of morphine say they are “disgusted” that the pharmacist involved has been cleared to continue in his position.
According to the BBC, Catherine Rodger, 75, died of a heart attack within hours of taking her first pill. She was usually prescribed 10 mg of morphine to help with her back pain but was given a prescription of 100 mg on this occasion, 10 times her normal dosage.
Damages were paid by the practitioner, a Dr Salahuddin Malik and the pharmacist, Mr Andrew Nixon. It was Mr Nixon who distributed the prescription and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society found that, although he should have realised the doctor’s error and they acknowledged that he had made a serious mistake, his fitness to continue to practice was not impaired.
In fact, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society conveyed that they were satisfied that he had taken the appropriate steps to ensure such an incident does not occur again.
Some times with cases where an injury or death has occurred as a result of medical negligence it is important to understand what the party wants. If you are making a claim for personal injury and are successful then this should result in an award of damages by way of compensation but there is no guarantee that an admission of liability will result in an apology from the third party.
Nor is it a guarantee that the medical authority will undertake an investigation to ensure that this does not happen in the future. This is unfortunate as under the Compensation Act 2006 there is a provision that an apology will not amount to an admission of liability so you would think that more individuals who have been accused of this type of negligence would still have decency to apologise for any harm they may have caused, especially in situations such as this which result in the death of a patient.
