Gran died of seizure after meds mix-up by pharmacy
OTHER CLIENT HAD SIMILAR NAME AND ADDRESS
A GRANDMOTHER suffered a fatal seizure after taking medicine supplied to her by a pharmacy that was intended for another customer with a similar name and address, an inquest has heard.
Margaret Corcoran (73) a mother of two from Tymonville Park, Tallaght, Dublin 24, died at Tallaght University Hospital on October 20, 2022, 11 days after she suffered a seizure linked to taking medicines that had not been prescribed for her.
Ms Corcoran’s sister, Marian Reilly, told a sitting of Dublin District Coroner’s Court that she had called to her sister’s home shortly after midday on October 9, 2022, as she had not answered her phone.
Mouth
Ms Reilly described finding her sister on the ground beside her bed in an unresponsive state with “frothing from her mouth.”
She alerted the emergency services and then checked her sister’s medication and found it was prescribed for a person called Margaret Clarke.
The inquest heard Ms Corcoran suffered severe brain damage as a result of a seizure she suffered in an ambulance while being brought to TUH.
In reply to questions from the coroner, Ms Reilly confirmed that Meaghers
Pharmacy at the Castletymon shopping centre in Tallaght organised her sister’s medication in blister packs to facilitate her taking various tablets at the correct time as a result of a recommendation by her family doctor.
Ms Reilly said her sister, who suffered from anxiety and depression, had “went low on herself ” during the Covid-19 pandemic as she had been forced to stop a part-time job that she loved.
However, she stressed that her sister was in good physical health before her death and had no history of seizures.
Ms Reilly told the coroner, Clare Keane, she had not found any medication near her sister in her bedroom.
When a paramedic also found the medication prescribed for another woman, she recalled: “I said she isn’t Margaret Clarke, she’s Margaret Corcoran.”
Garda Brendan Carmody told the inquest he had retained the medication intended for Ms Clarke that had been given to the deceased.
A representative of Meaghers Pharmacy Group, Elaine Lillis, offered the company’s “most heartfelt condolences” to Ms Corcoran’s family.
Ms Lillis, the group’s superintendent pharmacist, said the wrong medication had been given to the deceased as a result of “an unfortunate and regrettable dispensing human error.”
Ms Lillis, who was accompanied at the inquest by Meaghers Pharmacy Group’s founder and owner, Oonagh O’Hagan, said staff at the pharmacy were “very shocked and upset” over what happened.
Returning a verdict of death by misadventure, Dr Keane said Ms Corcoran had died in “a very tragic set of circumstances.”
The coroner said it had been unlucky the names and initials of the parties involved were similar, while their addresses also had similarities.
Dr Keane stressed that there was no error in the dispensing of the medicine intended for Ms Corcoran but that it had been incorrectly retrieved at the pharmacy when arranging for its collection by a courier.
Dr Keane said she endorsed the changes already implemented by Meaghers Pharmacy Group to prevent a recurrence of the error.
‘I said she isn’t Margaret Clarke, she’s Margaret Corcoran’