Pharmacists are entrusted with a very important and difficult job. They must be extremely knowledgeable about the chemical make up of pharmaceuticals and how they interact with each other. The pharmacist plays an incredibly important role in medicine that goes far beyond simply filling bottles with pills and performing transactions with customers.

There are a number of things that pharmacists must be knowledgeable about in order to keep patients from being seriously injured or killed. One of the things they must know about are potential drug interactions. A drug can be complete safe and have no known side effects until it reacts with another drug at which point it can become very deadly.

If a pharmacist has even a small doubt in his or her mind about giving a patient a certain drug, he or she should research the drug and find out if it does in fact interact negatively with any other medication that patient is taking. He or she should then counsel the patient before giving out the drug in order to find out about past and current drug history. If the patient says that he or she is on a drug which interacts dangerously with the drug the pharmacist is about to prescribe, the pharmacist should explain and refuse to give out the drug.

There are a number of potential things that can result from drug interaction. They range greatly in severity from minor side effects such as constipation or minor nausea to death. Some serious consequences of drug interactions include:

• Nausea
• Vomiting seizures
• Coma
• Death

A pharmacist who fails to properly warn a patient about a deadly drug interaction can be held liable for his or her actions.

Author SIG

To find out more about drug interactions and pharmacists, visit the website of Cincinnati personal injury lawyer Shawn M. Stepleton.

James Witherspoon

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