A six-week-old baby remains in hospital after a Sydney doctor wrote her a prescription for too much reflux medication.
Jessica Brough, 23, took little Grace into their family practice in what should have been a routine appointment, only to be sent away within five minutes with a prescription for three months worth of medicine, reports 7 news.
Naturally, the mother-of-two took the prescription to the pharmacist, who noticed the extreme dosage but was more concerned as to why an infant was prescribed injections containing alcohol for basic reflux.
Ms Brough collected an amended prescription later in the day, still recommending ten-millilitre doses, as opposed to the .07 that is suggested.
“For three days, my baby has been, for all intents and purposes, drunk,” Ms Brough told Yahoo7 News.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen to Grace until she grows older and see if she starts reaching those expected milestones.”
It wasn’t until a routine visit from a house nurse checking Grace’s weight that the family realised the danger she was in.
“I asked what the best way to get Grace to take the medication was and she took one look and said ‘that’s not right’,” Ms Brough said.
“She called the hospital and the pediatrician said ‘bring her in immediately’.
“Given the three month dosage, it would have fried her brain, caused liver damage, heart attack or she could have died, that’s what the doctor told us.”
With her little girl recovering in hospital, the young mum is now considering legal action against the doctor who has treated both her children, saying that she would have likely kept giving Grace the fatal dosage if no one had picked up on it.
“You put your trust in them… especially with a six-week-old baby, you don’t think ‘I better Google that they’ve prescribed the right dosage’.”
“It’s slipped through the crack basically four times.
“Doctors are so quick to get you in and out they don’t even pay attention to the fact that she is just six weeks old and very vulnerable.”
While tests on Grace’s heart, brain and liver showed no immediate damage, Ms Brough said the doctor and pharmacist needed to be reprimanded for the gross oversight.
“The doctor and pharmacy think they heard the last of it by being blasted by the doctor at the hospital but they haven’t heard nothing yet.”
The family’s GP has told 7 News, at the time he was lead to believe it was the right script. But in retrospect, it wasn’t correct.
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