Can We Trust the Pharmacy?

Today, September 28th, my wife Jessica went to a local chain drug store to get some children's Benadryl and infant Tylenol. On September 18th Tylenol voluntary recalled several lots of their infant pain medicine due to a possible contamination. My seven-month daughter has been teething on and off for about the last month, sometimes the Tylenol is the only way to get her back to sleep. So, do the pharmacies do their due diligence and ensure that we are not giving potentially harmful medicine to babies?

I'm not going to use the name of the pharmacy in this article but the story I'm about to tell is unlikely to be an isolated incident. When at the store to pick up the Tylenol Jessica asked an employee if they had pulled the possibly contaminated medicine from their shelves. The employee was not sure so she went to ask the manager, who was on a break, just to be sure. When the employee returned she told my wife that they had not yet gotten to the recall and contaminated lots may still be on the shelf. Strike one.

The next logical question to the employee was if she could get the list of lot numbers so that they could be sure they weren't selling a bad lot. After returning to the manager, who was still in the break room at this point, the employee came back and told my wife that, even though the recall was ten days ago, the store had not yet gotten around to printing the bad lot numbers. At this point, with understandably building frustration, Jessica decided to get children's Ibuprofen which is a completely different medicine but the next best option when placed in this situation.

I said earlier that this is probably not an isolated incident. Some people do not have the responsibility level necessary to handle a job that could potentially lead to a child becoming sick. But, aside from responsibility, it seems like this is a disgusting breach of duty and integrity. I haven't worked in a pharmacy in about 13 years but I'm going to estimate the number of Infant Tylenol bottles on the shelf probably isn't higher than forty. How long will it take to print off the numbers of bad lots and compare them to those forty? Stock in the back can be checked at any time but anything that is on the shelves should have been checked and bad lots pulled immediately.

So, next time you go into a pharmacy just remember that the people that are paid to ensure that recalls are followed don't necessarily feel that your children's health is important enough to spend an hour or two on.

Resource: http://www.nowpublic.com/health/tylenol-recall-2009-list-infant-and-childrens-tylenol-recall