Rarely have pharmacy technicians been in the spotlight as critically as they have been in recent years, with several high-profile instances of technician error making national headlines.
One recent case involved actor Dennis Quaid, whose newborn twins were given drugs with 1,000 times the required dosage of a prescription medication in late 2007. The hospital blamed a pharmacy technician who didn’t have a second technician verify the drug’s concentration, as well as another technician at a satellite pharmacy serving the pediatric unit who failed to double-check the concentration. Although the children recovered, the hospital employees were dismissed. A year earlier, the same thing happened to three infants in an Indianapolis hospital, resulting in their deaths.
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