[JLYates]

All pharmacy's make mistakes, all businesses make mistakes, there is only one person who is perfect. I can and did overlook the time that WalMart gave me someone else medications. It happens, they hear the name wrong and hand you someone elses meds. They put someone elses pills in the bag with my name on it. I got Suie Q's meds. It has her name and so I knew they were the wrong ones. Okay, not happy, but again, mistakes can be made. I can check to see if the meds are the ones I am supposed to get.

What I can not accept is that the assistant doesn't take the time to make sure the medication in that pill bottle is the correct one. They are risking a person's life and the excuse that it happens all the time isn't an excuse that is acceptable. Take that extra five seconds to check.
I trust my doctor to make a correct diagnosis based on the information that I give him. If it is wrong because I forgot to tell him something, that is my fault, not his.

No, at present we have not contacted them. Reason: Several lawyers have told us that it will give them the inside edge to fight us, to build a case that it is our fault. We should have checked the labels, we should have done this or done that. I have heard various suggestions on who to contact, where we can get help and I am going to check them out.

In some ways it is unfair to blame WalMart -- except for this one aspect. WalMart hires the employees who work in the pharmacy's. They decide how many assistants there will be at a given time. They decide on training.
So, in that aspect, they are also to "blame". Drugs that are different but in the same packets SHOULD NOT BE BESIDE EACH OTHER. That is an assumption on my part, but deduction is the only reason as to why the assistant grabed the wrong packet.
Both are the same shade of blue, both are shaped the same. They both have the first three letters, and the last couple of letters. Too much similarity created the potential for this to have happened.
If your going to place the drugs in alphabetical order (which is reasonable to be done), then place a note beside the boxes of drugs that are similar; check and make sure you have the right med. Before you slap that label on the paket, chek to make sure it is the correct one. Five seconds to filp it over, look at the whole name and go, yep, they match.

How many of us, when we get home with a medication, get online to make sure we are given the right drug, espcially when it is a drug that you have taken for 10 years? New drug, yes, I will check it out.
It is the right color, right size, right packet shape and design, right label, so, it is the right drug, take it. If it had been in a pill bottle, not the packet, we probably not even have known that he was on the wrong drug.
I get a script and the pill is totally different, I calll to find out what is going on. Change companies, different design but same med. Okay, no problem, take the med.

When you go to get new brake shoes on your car, do you crawl underneath it to see if they were put on, and put on correctly? Or electrical power goes out in your house and you find out it on the electric companies side, do you climb up the pole to make sure it was hooked up right? No you do not. So why should I have to check to see that the medications, that I TRUST my pharmacy to fill correctly, are the right pills?

Every pharmacy has at one time or another had lawsuits on giving the wrong meds that caused harm to somone. WalMart is not the only one.

Do we shop at WalMart any more? Not unless we have no choice. There are five in my area, and the closest Target is a 45 minute drive. It is a small store and has only half the items that we can get at WM. Our meds are filled at CVS and they have on the bottle the desription of what the pill should look like. Color, size and shape so we know it is the correct drug.
We now have to drive to three different stores to get all the items we could at WalMart. That is our choice. I am not asking others to do this. What I do want others to do is let their pharmacist, no matter what store, that they want them to make doubly sure that the drug they are giving you are the correct ones. Double check the container when they get the pills out before they but them in the bottle.

Thanks for the help and support. I will let eveyone knows what happens when it does happen.

I had called over 20 lawyers, and Frid four of them called back, three said no way, give it up. One, the third one said he would check it out, he was't afraid of WalMart, has went up aganst them and won.He is not expecting us to do the leg work, he will contact the different doctors Josh has seen and get info from them. Nothing may come of it, but at least he didn't right off the bat say no, won't go against WM.

Janette