The nursing home has given your father someone else's heart medication for three days. He doesn't have heart disease, but now he's in the emergency room with dangerously low blood pressure. A South Carolina nursing home neglect attorney can help you hold these facilities accountable for medication errors that cause harm to residents.
Medication management is one of the most basic responsibilities nursing homes have to their residents. Most residents take multiple medications daily, and they depend entirely on staff to give them the right pills at the right times in the right doses. When that system breaks down, residents can suffer strokes, heart attacks, internal bleeding, falls, seizures, and even death.
What Are the Most Common Medication Errors?
Nursing home accidents relating to medication administration come in many forms, and they're all preventable. Understanding what qualifies as a medication mistake is the first step in recognizing when your loved one has been harmed by neglect.
Giving the Wrong Medication to the Wrong Resident
This is shockingly common.
Picture this fictional scenario: Jane in Room 204 needs blood pressure medication, while Julie in Room 206 needs a blood thinner. A rushed nurse mixes up the charts and gives each woman the other's medication. Jane's blood pressure spikes, and Julie starts bleeding internally. Both women end up hospitalized because someone didn't take the time to check their identification.
Wrong Dosage or Missed Medications
Getting the right medication but the wrong amount can be just as dangerous. Another hypothetical scenario illustrates what could happen. Suppose Roger takes warfarin to prevent blood clots at 5 mg daily. A new aide misreads the chart and gives him 15 mg. Within days, he begins bleeding internally. If no one catches the error in time, he could suffer a brain hemorrhage or life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding.
Dosage errors with narrow-therapeutic-index medications are particularly dangerous. Drugs like warfarin, digoxin, phenytoin, carbamazepine, theophylline, and lithium require precise dosing because even small variations can cause serious harm.
Federal regulations require a pharmacist to review each resident's drug regimen at least monthly and report any irregularities to help prevent these errors.
Missed Medications and Timing Failures
Sometimes the problem is not giving anything at all. Residents who miss doses of critical medications can experience serious medical crises.
- Blood thinners like warfarin. For someone recovering from surgery or managing atrial fibrillation, skipping blood thinners can be fatal.
- Cardiac medications like digoxin. Heart failure symptoms can rapidly worsen if patients miss doses, leading to dangerous fluid buildup and respiratory distress.
- Seizure medications like phenytoin. Miss one dose, and a resident who's been seizure-free for years could have a breakthrough seizure, fall, and suffer a head injury.
- Antibiotics. When antibiotics aren't given on time, infections spread. What started as a urinary tract infection becomes sepsis because someone forgot to administer the afternoon dose.
- Psychiatric medications. Residents with dementia or mental health conditions depend on medications to manage symptoms. When those medications are skipped or delayed, residents can become agitated, violent, or experience psychotic episodes that endanger themselves and others.
Timing matters just as much as the medication itself. Facilities that don't maintain proper medication schedules are violating their duty of care.
How Do These Medication Errors Happen?
Most medication errors stem from systemic problems within nursing homes. Recognizing these underlying causes helps families understand why preventable mistakes keep occurring.
Understaffing and Overworked Nurses
Mix-ups can happen when facilities are understaffed or protocols aren't followed. One nurse trying to administer medications to 40 residents in a two-hour window is a disaster waiting to happen. When facilities don't invest in adequate staffing, residents pay the price.
South Carolina Statute § 44-7-262 sets specific resident-to-nursing-staff ratios. What’s more, federal regulations now require a registered nurse on-site 24/7 in Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes, subject to limited exemptions for rural facilities or those granted waivers.
Inadequate Training and Supervision
Federal regulations permit nursing facilities to allow unlicensed personnel to administer medications only if state law permits and only under the general supervision of a licensed nurse. Every staff member involved in medication administration must receive proper training and ongoing oversight.
Poor Documentation
Medication administration requires meticulous record-keeping. Every dose given must be documented immediately. When documentation is sloppy or when shifts don't communicate effectively, medications get duplicated or missed entirely.
What Harm Do Medication Errors Cause?
The consequences of medication mistakes range from uncomfortable to fatal. Understanding the potential harm helps families recognize when neglect has seriously injured their loved one.
Getting the wrong medication can cause:
- Dangerous drops in heart rate or blood pressure leading to falls
- Extreme drowsiness and difficulty breathing
- Life-threatening drops in blood sugar, causing confusion, seizures, and coma
- Internal bleeding and brain hemorrhages
Not getting the right medication or dose can lead to:
- Stroke, heart attack, and kidney damage from untreated high blood pressure
- Diabetic ketoacidosis, coma, and death from missed diabetes medications
- Breakthrough seizures causing falls and head injuries
- Sepsis and organ failure from missed antibiotics
What Should You Do After a Medication Error?
Finding out your family member has been harmed by a medication mistake is terrifying. Taking the right steps protects both your loved one’s safety and their legal rights.
Document the Incident
Write down the date and time you learned about the error, who told you, and exactly what they said. If your loved one can communicate, document their account of what happened and how they're feeling. Take photos of any visible injuries. Request copies of all medical records related to the incident, including medication administration records, nurses' notes, and emergency room records.
Report to Authorities
File a formal written complaint with the nursing home's administration and keep a copy. You also have the right to report the incident to the South Carolina Department of Public Health, which took over nursing home regulation as of July 1, 2024. File a complaint online through their website, or call (803) 545-4370 or toll-free at 1-800-922-6735.
Federal and state law protect residents' right to be free from interference or reprisals for exercising their rights. Families who report concerns should not face retaliation.
Nursing homes must report any allegation of abuse to the South Carolina Department of Public Health within two hours. Other qualifying incidents, including medication errors that cause or could cause serious harm, require an initial report within 24 hours and a follow-up written report within five working days.
Contact an Attorney
Medication errors can form the basis of a negligence claim against a nursing home. An Anderson personal injury attorney can investigate what happened, determine whether the facility violated its duty of care, and help you pursue compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering, and other damages.
File a Medical Negligence Claim
Time matters. Evidence can disappear, staff members can leave, and memories fade. South Carolina's statute of limitations for medical negligence claims, which often applies to nursing home medication cases, is generally three years from the date of injury, subject to discovery rules and a six-year statute of repose. Different rules may apply if the facility is government-owned.
The sooner you consult with an attorney, the better they can preserve evidence and protect your rights.