On common practices.

[theweaselking]

An argument I have had with the lovely torrain:

I triple-check medications. I read all the notes and when a pharmacist hands me a bottle of pills, I check to make sure the label matches the prescription and also that the note pamplet matches what I went to the doctor for. Most times this results in the pharmacist explaining a perceived inconsistency that's my fault for being a non-expert, occasionally I catch a mistake.

I double-check fast food orders. I read the screen and if something looks wrong on the display-to-workers with respect to what I've said to the cashier, I ask about it. Sometimes this has them explaining to me why I don't know their system, more often I've found a mistake.

My Lovely Wife thinks I'm weird for second-guessing pharmacists AT ALL, and for obsessively double-checking fast food. Me? Google is one of the smartest people I know. If my pharmacist and my doctor disagree, I want to know why. If Google disagrees with either, or both, I kinda want to know why. And if the instructions to the people who MAKE my food disagree with what I want my food to be, I want to know whay.

And beyond that, I was raised with the practice that, as soon as you accept a medication from a pharmacist, you IMMEDIATELY check the medication and the dosage to determine if it matches the prescription, because pharmacists are awesome and RARELY make mistakes but the one time they do make a mistake you are totally fucked. So you check their work.

[Poll #1930624]

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I will note that I now obsessively double-check the dog's medication.

(I might start double-checking mine, but it hasn't come up since I was given cause to double-check the dog's, so I will go with the "former behaviour" answer to the poll.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Now, but that doesn't count because it happened after I caught a mistake you missed.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The second one is a "hell yes". Even more so if someone is in the hospital, where people are way more rushed and a much wider range of both drugs and ailments are plausible.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Well the fast food sort of usually comes double-checked by the cashier, since in my neck of woods the part of "fast" is not that fast ("food" fortunately is), and there's usually more than enough time for them to review the order or focus on what they are doing. At worst, the only thing I need to correct is to yelp "no ice!" as they are about to reach for it (soft drinks are usually cool enough to drink as-is, and ice just texturally distracts me and creates unwanted diluted spots in drinks), but that's sort of understandable reflex since most people take their icy lumps without further thought.

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

Also, there are people like me who really, really like ice.. at places that do self-serve fountain drinks, like BK, I usually fill my cup all the way up with ice and then just top it up with drink more often than I would otherwise have to. Also I eat the ice when I'm done.. I like ice.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

As a coeliac sufferer, checking both is a must for me. Substituting a medication can mean that I get something that contains (or could be contaminated with) gluten.

As for fast food, it also means (depending on the venue) keeping an eagle-eye on the preparation process. Example: Takeaway coffee, yesterday. I see the lids are put down on a counter with the order written on them - good, no chance of mess-up. Then I see the cappuchino topping being sprinkled on the same counter, and the lids being pulled through it. So I ask 'is the topping gluten free?' Of course it isn't, so I get them to re-make the machiattos that they just made poisonous for me. Fortunately, they were very good about it, but some places get right hostile about things.

And just to forestall anyone who says 'that could not possibly have hurt', 20ppm gluten (that's about 20mg across an entire day) is enough to trigger an auto-immune response in a coeliac sufferer. 10mg/day (or abour 1/350 of a slice of bread) is regarded as the maximum safe exposure.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Related: Domino's "gluten-free pizza" is gluten-free... but cooked in the same ovens on the same unwashed surfaces as their gluten-rich pizza. So "not, in any way, gluten-free"

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

Double-checking meds is obvious to me; you'd have to be crazy not to. For fast food, it's a 'sometimes'.. I'm usually ordering pretty straightforward things, hard to mess up. When I order my burger or sandwich with a bunch of extras on it, then yeah, I check to make sure that's what they're making.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

you'd have to be crazy not to.

YES THIS IS HOW I GREW UP.

And yet, a surprising-to-me number of people who take more prescriptions than I do are all "wut? Check the pharmacist?"

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I marked 'Sometimes' to meds because I do check, but not to the extent you do.

[sbloyd.livejournal.com]

I sometimes check those same things, but recently after buying a month-long pill case jobby and distributing my wife's prescriptions into it, I found that there were only 30 pills in my wife's 45 pill thyroid scrip. Now I check every time, and at the same time I wonder... how many times have we been shorted by the pharmacists? It won't stop bugging me.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wait til I get home to check my meds, because anxiety. But then I check them VERY THOROUGHLY, especially the Patient Information Leaflet that comes in the box of pills (why oh why do they give you a pitiful printed sheet with hardly any info on it here in Canada? - I look the PIL up online). This also helps catch out when doctors have prescribed you something *really fucking stupid*, such as something that says DO NOT TAKE IF YOU HAVE (OTHER CONDITION) and the parts that warn about side effects, which I have been fucked over by SO MANY TIMES. Had some life-threatening pharmacist (and lazy doctor) mistakes, so no way am I *not* checking that shit.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Here, you Have to double check the meds. In fact, in some cases it is best to -count- them, because once you leave, you are SOL. The pharmacist can't take them back, and won't admit guilt if they short changed you.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I take a more relaxed approach to checking my meds than you because ...

* I'm an ex-pharmacist. Haven't practiced for 24 years, but enough still sticks that I'm familiar with most of the stuff I'm prescribed and I know how to read the literature to understand the newer items. (Our pharmacopoeia, outside of a few specialities, has been surprisingly static since the early 1980s.)

* The pharmacy I use is just across the street from my front door -- less than five minutes' walk away, most of it waiting for a gap in the traffic so I can cross. So if I discover a mistake when I get home I can get it fixed within fifteen minutes.

And as for fast food ... I avoid walk-up burger joints and use carry-out places (Indian and Chinese). And note that the error rate has fallen close to zero since I started using an online ordering service -- presumably because they're reading a legible order list, rather than trying to take dictation over the phone in a noisy environment.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you *do* check your medications, right? You compare the label to the prescription and the prescription to the symptoms, you don't just take the pills you're handed without checking that the pill and the schedule on the bottle match what the doctor said?

That's the kind of thing I mean.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I check medication to make sure the chemist has given me what the doc sent - and that they haven't made a mistake and that I truly understand what I'm suppoed to take. Because medication mistake = DEATH!

I don't check against google though - my doc has prescribed them, why I should listen to random net folks over him is bemusing

I don't check take away. If my take away order is wrong... then it's wrong. C'est la vie.

[moiread]

> why I should listen to random net folks over him is bemusing

Random net folks? Probably not. But Google in general can be extremely useful.

I had a medication for awhile that gave me seizures. Neither my GP nor the ER doctors would believe me that it was that medication, even though the evidence said that it was the only possible culprit, until I went and looked up the clinical trial results myself and found that it was a very rare side effect. (Not actually that surprising -- anyone can have seizures if you mess with certain processes enough, so any medication messing with any of those processes can potentially cause seizures.) We changed the medication and the seizures stopped right away.

I have other stories like that. Doctors are not omniscient. They have a particular area of knowledge, but it is not perfect, and even among specialists, often a doctor knows a lot more about one area of that specialty than the others. (I have been sent from one gastroenterologist to another within the same city, for instance, because most of their respective knowledge bases were focused on different gut diseases and once we determined what mine was, it was better to swap to the guy who knows more about that one.)

I mean, I have friends who are computer engineers, but that doesn't mean I assume they know absolutely everything about every piece of hardware or software available in this country, or about every single potential problem that either one might have. They know more than I do, but sometimes they look shit up on Google too. So does my doctor. Why shouldn't I? :)

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Hunh, thought I'd answered this yesterday...

I check fast-food orders at the counter; if they cash is set up to show the order while it's being rung-in, I check it there too in hopes of heading off errors before they become a fuss to fix.

Prescriptions I check only to make sure the name and number is the same, and I'll admit I'm not too careful in doing so. I haven't had much practice, as I've had maybe 4 or 5 prescriptions (in total, counting renewals) in the past decade.

-- Steve's been lucky that way.

[moiread]

I think for me, I'm just the personality type who does that sort of thing. Like how I always lock my door behind me by habit when I enter the apartment, look over the charges on receipts, measure furniture before I buy, etc. I'm both highly practical and a stickler. It's what I do.

Probably for the best, though, because when my meds get messed up, I have seizures and/or cardiac events and/or wind up in the hospital anyway after a week of not being able to keep anything down. So yay for being a stickler already!

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

I don't eat fast food. At all. Ever.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

I answered "No" to fast food, because unless you count Subway or Chipotle, I don't order fast food. In the case of Subway and Chipotle, I watch them put together my order anyway.

The only times I've been prescribed prescription drugs was for opiate painkillers. I didn't particularly care in those cases as long as the pain in my eyes (PRK surgery) or ribs (took a knee to the ribs playing basketball) abated.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Never had antibiotics? Lucky. I apparently infect easily.

But for me, I remind the doctor when prescribing what my allergies are, then I check the prescription against Google to make sure there isn't something I'm allergic to in there that the doctor missed, then I check that the label matches the prescription when I pick them up. I've caught mistakes, like, three times ever, but all three times were potentially very serious errors, and checking takes the next best thing to zero time.

Also: I suspect your opiates were delivered by a Navy doc from a Navy pharmacy, yes? I think "the tech shorted you and stole your pills" is less likely to be a problem.

(And for fast food, I totally check the screen and/or watch assembly, and I totally will say "no, wait, stop" at any time. But.)

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

We don't do fast food, so I checked no to that, but prescriptions, always, always, always. And don't give me the generic if the doc hasn't said generic is okay; I don't care if it's your policy, I'm paying out of pocket and if our doc has said specifically X, I want X, not knockoff X.

[botia.livejournal.com]

One of my medications is a controlled substance, and you bet your ass I count them, because being "shorted" by techs stealing them is disturbingly common.

I also check the written prescription every time I pick it up. Have had the doctor or his staff make mistakes writing it out at least four times in the past three years, two of those were the last two prescriptions I got.

Yes, absolutely second-guess them! Especially in a hospital, where giving patients the wrong medication or medication they are allergic to happens with horrifying frequency. If you are hospitalized and they give you medication, ask every single time what the medication is. If you're not familiar with it, ask what it is for. You might be getting something that's meant for someone else in the same room as you. If you're allergic to any medications, this is extra super important. I have heard MANY stories of nurses coming in to dose someone with something that could kill them because the DOCTOR didn't see the allergy warning when they prescribed it. Hell, they kept trying over and OVER to drag my grandfather off to get an MRI when the metal imbedded in his body would have killed him. My family basically had to post a guard to make sure they didn't do that!

So yes, they are professionals. They're also humans, and they're often working at far, far beyond the capacity they should be, because there is more demand for their services than can be supplied. It's a million times better to question and maybe annoy or even embarrass a medical professional than to experience the results of a mistake they made! And if you catch something, you've just saved THEIR ass in addition to the patient's.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Define "check the medication". Do you mean, like, check the bottle to make sure that what's printed there matches what you were told? Or do you mean pull out a pillbook and compare the exact pills you received to photos of what they should look like?

As for fast food, I only sit down and check that everything's in the bag at Taco Bell. For some reason, multiple Taco Bells have had a history of leaving stuff out for me, but I've not had that problem at other franchises.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I mean, compare the label to what's been prescribed. Make sure you got Tramadol (a narcotic that works on dogs) and not Tramacet (Tramadol + Acetaminophen, which is toxic to dogs) in your dog's prescription, to cite one recent and real example.

Multiple people have mentioned counting the pills, too, although I don't usually do that.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I so rarely get medication, and it's never anything remarkable, that although i double-check often, i'm sure i haven't always done it.

I always double-check my fast-food orders because i hate most sauces.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

Most of the medicine I take nowadays comes from an internet business that allows me to circumvent the pharmacy/prescription system, and when it arrives in my mailbox it's in whatever obvious packaging there is for that particular medicine, rather than the generic orange cylinder you get at the pharmacy. I did have a problem recently where I only got half of my order, but they're sending the rest of it now, so that's good.

As for fast food, I always double check that, especially if there seemed to be some confusion as to what I was ordering while I was ordering it. I guess the sound quality on those drive-through systems isn't very good, since this tends to happen a lot.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I have never had an error in a prescription but I check them every time. I get errors in fast food all the time but I never think to check.

I think because the impact of getting the wrong meds is likely to be a hell of a lot more serious than the minor annoyance of getting something I don't want in my food.

I expect I would feel differently about that if I had actual food allergies as opposed to mere sensitivities.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Exceptions are, of course, those with severe food allergies -- there, a fuck-up in order can mean the difference between life and death, just like it can mean in medication.

Fish is such a problem to me, as an example.

[glenn-3.livejournal.com]

In spite of getting a wrong prescription once that could have done major damage to my already compromised kidneys, and twice getting my cheeseburgers without hamburger patties in them, I never remember to consistently check either. It just never occurs to me. I do, however, open movies and CDs as soon as possible to make sure there are really disks in them. Priorities!

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

I don't check my medicines, generally because I can see the pharmacists pulling up my repeat prescriptions, at the pharmacy to which I always go, right next to my doctor's office. I've already checked them and I have patient leaflets put aside just in case. It's easy for me, though: I've had the same medications for years. My doctor and the pharmacists at my drug store know me. And I live in this socialist hellhole that still has the NHS.

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

Yes for any drugs whatsoever. I've met some complete morons in healthcare who behave like they don't understand what a drug interaction is, let alone check or inform appropriately about side effects. Everything gets checked before I go to the pharmacy and then again on receipt.

I check my fast food orders too. It's a treat, not a lottery.

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

I have food allergies and if mayo is on my burger I'll hurl.

I've checked medicine ever since one time as a kid someone gave my older sister two medications not to be taken together and I read the bag and saw that and told my mom. My mom didn't say "oh you're 8 what do you know"; she took the bags, read em, then took them back and had the meds fixed.