Yahoo News NHS hospital dispenses baby medicine six months out of date
An NHS hospital has apologised after dispensing medicine for a baby that was six months beyond its use-by date.
Kent and Canterbury Hospital also admitted it had other out-of-date boxes of the same medication, Gaviscon, on its shelves.
Four-month-old Phoebe Nightingale was given the expired medication to treat severe reflux earlier this month.
An internal investigation was sparked when her furious mother pointed out to staff that the medicine’s use-by date expired two months before her daughter was even born.
I bought it back into the pharmacy and they were just as appalled as me
Lauren Nightingale
“I had only got as far as the car park when I spotted the date,” said Lauren Nightingale.
“I was absolutely disgusted - I bought it back into the pharmacy and they were just as appalled as me.
“They checked all the other boxes and all said February 2017, so we couldn't’ even get any medicine."
Ms Nightingale was referred to the Kent and Canterbury hospital by her GP due to a national shortage of infant Gaviscon.
She said staff had said her daughter would not have been harmed by the expired medicine, but that it would not have worked as well.
Hospital bosses said they are investigating how the the error occurred, but claim no other patients were given the expired medication.
Pharmacy director Will Wilson said: “We are very sorry for this mistake - we ensured that the patient was given in-date medicine as quickly as possible.”
A spokesman for East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, said robotic dispensers, which are used in its pharmacy, had not been involved in that incident.
