GRAN DIED AFTER PHARMACY MEDS DELIVERY MIX-UP
Coroner told sister found 73-yr-old lying beside bed
BY
A GRANNY suffered a fatal seizure after taking meds from a pharmacy which was intended for another customer with a similar-sounding name and address, an inquest has heard.
Margaret Corcoran, 73, a mother-oftwo from Tymonville Park, Tallaght, South Dublin, died at Tallaght University Hospital on October 20, 2022, 11 days after she suffered a seizure.
Ms Corcoran’s sister, Marian Reilly, told a sitting of Dublin District Coroner’s Court that she had called to her sibling’s home shortly after midday on October 9, 2022 as she had not answered phone calls from her.
Ms Reilly described finding her 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 said she had not noticed any major change in her sister when she had last seen her about four days earlier.
She 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 which she loved.
However, she stressed that her sister was in
GRIEVING Marian Reilly good physical health before her death and had no history of seizures.
Ms Reilly told the coroner, Clare Keane, that she had not found any medication near her sister in her bedroom.
When a paramedic also found the meds prescribed for another woman, she recalled: “I said she isn’t Margaret Clarke, she’s Margaret Corcoran.”
Garda Brendan Carmody told the inquest that he had retained the medication intended for Ms Clarke which had been given to the deceased.
Garda Carmody said the blister packs showed that Ms Corcoran had taken all the various medications for four full days as well as some other tablets for two further days.
CONDOLENCES
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”.
She said the pharmacy only became aware that the wrong medication had been given to Ms Corcoran after it had been contacted by a nurse at TUH following her admission to the hospital.
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”.
She 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 SISTER MARIAN REILLY MEDICATION MIX-UP