Hi all, A quick question. How many of us have been given the wrong medication by the pharmacist? My wife collected the pills yesterday. They should have been 300mg Pregabalin but I was given 300mg Gabapentin. The pharmacist’s white label on outside said Pregabalin but the box and contents were Gabapentin. They were changed this morning with an apology. It is quite a serious error. What should I do about it - anything else - should it be reported to higher authority? Just wondering … Thanks. R.
Gabapentin and pregablin are essentially from the same tree of drugs but the gabapentin is the cheaper version so pharmacists and doctors often try and get away with giving that one instead. However I would write a letter complaining as this is something that shouldn’t have happened. If the gp writes a prescription for pregablin it should be exactly that prescription drug administered! I wonder how many times it has happened and people haven’t noticed!
Thank you for your reply Karina. I tried Gabapentin in the past and it didn’t help my pain. My MS nurse prescribed Pregabalin originally and it helped a lot but there is some pain breakthrough. They are not quite the same and certainly not interchangeable at same mg prescription level. I think I will inform my GP of the mistake and leave it with him. R
I was once given a drug that begins with ‘a’ (I can’t remember its full name) instead of my amitriptyline. When I read the leaflet it was prescribed for patients with heart problems and affects your BP. I rushed straight back to the pharmacy and they were very relieved that I had spotted the error and had not taken any as it could have had serious consequences for me! They said it would have to be reported higher up in their chain and fully investigated.
I left it with them as I believe, in my case, it was a straight forward error that should never have happened as all prescriptions are supposed to be checked by another member of staff before they leave the pharmacy.
Tracey x
Pregablin is much stronger so hopefully should work. I had a bout of nerve pain recently which I’m just getting over (had it for about a month during my relapse). I stopped taking the pregablin as the nerve pain is easing off and just continue to do exercises to the arm which help. Also strangely the nerve pain all started after the dentist doing a filling (as did some of my other relapse symptoms)- long story short I’ve since had to have 2 emergency root canals so I wonder if part of my nerve pain was initially started by my teeth. Apparently when speaking to my neurologist last week he said its not uncommon from your teeth to then trigger the brain to do all sorts! Strange hey!