A patient has described suffering “horrendous” symptoms for three days after a Boots pharmacy gave him the wrong medication.
The 51-year-old was prescribed a drug to help with his insomnia, but was given one for high blood pressure with a similar name.
He believes Boots pharmacy staff are overworked and this led to the mistake.
Boots said the pharmacy in Basingstoke was “fully staffed” and it took patient safety “very seriously”.
The patient’s symptoms lasted for three days and included a “nasty, thumping, unbearable headache” and “constant nausea”.
He contacted the BBC following an investigation into the Nottingham-based company, in which some pharmacy staff said they were under too much pressure and feared mistakes would be made.
The man has been getting medication from the same pharmacy in Basingstoke every month for 14 years and said he had “seen the pattern of them being overwhelmed”.
The person who gave him the wrong medication was “looking a bit frazzled”, he said, and he “chalked it up to them being really stressed”.
“It is shocking that this happened to me, and what I went through was horrendous,” said the patient.
“Had that been someone else who took different medication to me, they could have died as a result.”
