Girl dies after pharmacist refuses to give EpiPen without prescription


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So I was just thinking about this story again tonight. I thought ok, the chick died, to bad, so sad, oh boo. So now lets say another man runs into his store a year later, says Help Help Help!!! My daughter is dying, But this time the guy is lying, but this time because he felt bad about the last time gives the guy a pen. He runs away. The pharmacist now gets fired for giving a person an EpiPen without a prescription.

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Wow, how callous can people be to say that "the pharmacy did the right thing by not providing life saving medicine"?

 

It boggles the mind!

Because pharmacists don't have the authority to give out prescription. He wasn't even able to see the girl to make sure she really was suffering. What if I went in saying "oh my wife is in a ton of pain she can't even move so we can't get her to the hospital, I really need some vicodin please" Do you think I would get it?

What if it was a sting operation by the police to see if anyone was handing out drugs? The pharmacist now loses his job, and gets sent to jail.

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Unfortunately, the parents should have called an ambulance as soon as they discovered that something was wrong.  Running to the pharmacist was the wrong thing to do.  Any discussion about what the guy at chemist should or should not have done is superfluous.

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Hello,

"She" (Mother/girl/etc) is not a authorized doctor. Not that I dispute your claims of being too late but I am sure that if you call emergency services and claim "My daughter has a alergic reaction, she does not have a perscription for x drugs, and she needs it now" the ambulance will have adrenaline shot when they arrive.

 

Whether she is a doctor isn't relevant. It's common knowledge that people can go into anaphylactic shock in mere minutes and will die without immediate treatment.The ambulance is simply going to take too long to get there unless you are lucky. The point of an epipen is to give you a fighting chance to live long enough to actually receive medical treatment. It's akin to applying a tourniquet on someone bleeding out.

 

 

Unfortunately, the parents should have called an ambulance as soon as they discovered that something was wrong.  Running to the pharmacist was the wrong thing to do.  Any discussion about what the guy at chemist should or should not have done is superfluous.

 

Unfortunately, she would have been dead by the time help got there unless they could get there within 5-15 minutes.

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Unfortunately, she would have been dead by the time help got there unless they could get there within 5-15 minutes.

There's no reason why an ambulance couldn't arrive that quickly, especially in a city like Dublin. Her chances of survival would certainly have been better if an ambulance had been called. Failing to call one because you think they might take a long time is pretty silly.

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Wow, how callous can people be to say that "the pharmacy did the right thing by not providing life saving medicine"?

 

It boggles the mind!

 

This is clearly a rather complex and bad situation for both but the pharmacist can't really do something he/she is told and trained not to. Do you have any idea how many people pass by looking for medicine they're not supposed to get?

 

That said, may the girl rest in peace. It's really sad and frustrating to be in that kind of situation.

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There's no reason why an ambulance couldn't arrive that quickly, especially in a city like Dublin. Her chances of survival would certainly have been better if an ambulance had been called. Failing to call one because you think they might take a long time is pretty silly.

 

Why do you say that? Dublin is high traffic so it makes it far more difficult to get places quickly. The hospital itself is located approximately 11 minutes away at good times. Factor in slack of a minute or two for a call, dispatch, and for EMT to get to the vehicle to leave and you've made it in 13 minutes at best? Factor in that it was during a busy time of day and then how long?

 

The article never states that the no one called emergency services (that was just a random assumption by folk here to assign blame) and indeed an EMT crew in the area did get to her so obviously someone called and yet she still died. The most likely scenario is that she was out on the street waiting and her mother rushed into the pharmacy to try to get her an Epipen. In the meantime she collapsed and EMT services arrived, but it was too late because of the lack of Epipen.

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Why do you say that? Dublin is high traffic so it makes it far more difficult to get places quickly. The hospital itself is located approximately 11 minutes away at good times. Factor in slack of a minute or two for a call, dispatch, and for EMT to get to the vehicle to leave and you've made it in 13 minutes at best? Factor in that it was during a busy time of day and then how long?

Well I live in London which is also a high traffic area and the few times that I've called an ambulance it's arrived within 10 minutes. I'd expect a properly stocked ambulance would be able to deal with a case like this on site without having to wait to get to the hospital to deal with the emergency.

The article never states that the no one called emergency services (that was just a random assumption by folk here to assign blame) and indeed an EMT crew in the area did get to her so obviously someone called and yet she still died. The most likely scenario is that she was out on the street waiting and her mother rushed into the pharmacy to try to get her an Epipen. In the meantime she collapsed and EMT services arrived, but it was too late because of the lack of Epipen.

Well the article doesn't say that an ambulance was called so it seems safer to assume that one wasn't. You may be right but we don't know.

By the way, I'm not trying to apportion blame. I just think it's common sense to call an ambulance in an emergency like this (especially in a large city) rather than hope for the best with a chemist.

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I bet most of you defending the scum "pharmacist" would be throwing "righteous" tantrums if the pharmacists was refusing to pass out the morning after pill or Plan B

 

"Scum" that's rich, he did his job. Would you give away prescription medicine to every person who came in claiming an emergency or a sob story? You'd be providing half of the city's drug addicts before the month is up. You'd probably end up in prison when the police send someone in to try and see if they can get medication from you.

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I don't think chemists/pharmacys should be in the business of dishing out adrenaline to any person that demands it.

 

It's a tragic loss, but it does raise the question as to why the mother didn't ring 999 as her first reaction. Instead she ran off to find a chemist on the hope they'd just give out controlled drugs to random strangers?

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I don't think chemists/pharmacys should be in the business of dishing out adrenaline to any person that demands it.

 

It's a tragic loss, but it does raise the question as to why the mother didn't ring 999 as her first reaction. Instead she ran off to find a chemist on the hope they'd just give out controlled drugs to random strangers?

And/or the father.

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This story is sad.   First off its hard to blame anyone.   Under The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland rules it is alright to give out drugs in an emergency so he was allowed but then we dont even know if the girl was in front of him or outside.  If she was in front of him then I might put some blame on him because he should be able to tell what it looked like.    Also it was a bad move to forget your medicine but ###### happens and its real easy to start throwing blame and calling people idiots when your sitting in a computer chair no where near what happened.   I dont think anyone can honestly say there wasnt a time when they ran off without something very important or did something out of the ordinary in a no time to think situation.   Everyone does stupid crap then AFTER the fact when you actually have time to think about it wonder why you didnt do this or do that.   I mean im not under the stress of my daughter dieing and i have thought about it and i always have a cell phone so i would of been calling the ambulance and telling them im running to the pharmacy

 

Also just throwing this out there but apparently the Chinese restaurant did not have signs up stating peanuts were used but she said they didnt want to blame them.  I am suprised dealing with this for 14 years they didnt know curry had peanuts but ###### happens i guess.

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Also just throwing this out there but apparently the Chinese restaurant did not have signs up stating peanuts were used but she said they didnt want to blame them.  I am suprised dealing with this for 14 years they didnt know curry had peanuts but **** happens i guess.

It was satay sauce.

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Well I live in London which is also a high traffic area and the few times that I've called an ambulance it's arrived within 10 minutes. I'd expect a properly stocked ambulance would be able to deal with a case like this on site without having to wait to get to the hospital to deal with the emergency.

Well the article doesn't say that an ambulance was called so it seems safer to assume that one wasn't. You may be right but we don't know.

By the way, I'm not trying to apportion blame. I just think it's common sense to call an ambulance in an emergency like this (especially in a large city) rather than hope for the best with a chemist.

 

The article says an ambulance staff tried to resuscitate her but that it was too late. Ambulances don't just show up for no reason so clearly someone notified emergency services otherwise there wouldn't have been an ambulance staff trying to save her... 

 

Saying ABC should have done XYZ is the very definition of apportioning blame and that's what the majority of posts in this thread have been doing without knowing the details and at the same time just assuming that emergency services weren't called. People tend to want to instinctively blame the victim without the facts when things go wrong. It's not exactly a new phenomenon... 

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This tragedy could have been avoided so easily. How was this girl in reach of the satay sauce in the first place? If the dish had been brought mistakenly, it should have been sent back immediately.

 

Some restaurants should consider having some EpiPens on-hand for their own sake, if they serve any dishes with peanuts. Although the restaurant wasn't at fault in this case, anybody in the kitchen could have made just as tragic a mistake. That's why you keep fire extinguishers around too. Having that safety net would be something customers would appreciate if they are the ones to make the mistake.

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