Medical Malpractice Lawyer

The purpose of medication is to provide treatment for a medical ailment. Many Americans take prescription drugs trusting that their condition will improve as a result. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Many prescription medications end up doing harm to patients, sometimes to the extent that they are worse off than they were before taking the drug.

How Prescription Drugs May Harm You

The general perception is that prescription drugs are safe to use, otherwise they wouldn’t be available. This may be true when taken according to directions, but in certain circumstances, prescription medications may be as dangerous as street drugs. Maybe the drug was approved before adequate testing was conducted to determine whether it had dangerous side effects. Maybe your doctor made a mistake and prescribed too much or too little. Maybe the drug was prescribed correctly but your pharmacist made a mistake in filling it. Whatever the issue that causes the problem, serious side effects such as the following can result:

• Liver damage
• Brain damage
• Overdose
• Addiction

These effects can be life-threatening, and even if you do not die as a result, they may cause consequences that can follow you around for the rest of your life.

What You Can Do About It

One of the first things to do is to determine how exactly you came to harm. In other words, was it due to an error in prescribing the drug or filling the prescription, or was the medication itself unsafe or defective? In the former case, you may have grounds to sue the prescribing physician and/or pharmacist for medical malpractice. In the latter case, you may be able to bring a product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer of the drug itself.

However, just because you were injured as the result of taking a prescription drug, it does not automatically follow that you have a case against the drug manufacturer. A number of factors come into play to make that determination:

• The drug manufacturer’s awareness of the problem and due diligence in informing the public
• A reaction or side effect not listed on the packaging
• Use of the drug for an FDA-approved purpose and according to label directions
• Severity of resulting medical complications

In other words, if you used the drug for its intended purpose according to the directions on the label and suffered a debilitating side effect that wasn’t listed as a potential risk, you may have grounds to sue the drug manufacturer. An experienced attorney may be better able to make that determination based on the specifics in your case. Contact our office for more information.

Source: Medical Malpractice Lawyer Miami, FL, Needle & Ellenberg, P.A.