prilosec suspension gone bad?

[mama_duck32]

i am an lpn school nurse. recentlly I was ordered to give a dose of prilosec by an RN that I thought had gone bad...i refused and was fired. I am concerned with the safety of this child if this medication has gone bad. The RN in question told me it had not however, this medication went from milky white to light brown to dark almost chocolate brown and developed an odor that I can only describe as somewhere between sour milk and rotten egg. Can you please advise if you have ever heard of this medication changing like this? I know in my heart I did the right thing since this child already had major medical issues and since I took an oath "to do no harm," at least I can sleep knowing I didnt give it.

[AllieandJacksProudMama]

we never let ours get older than 14 days, because that is all the supply we are given. However, if it had a foul order and was brown, then I would say it was bad. Ours is generally light purple and doesn't really smell at all.

[andrea]

Yep, it gets brownish once it gets bad. It has only ever happened to us when we had a really old bottle sitting in the fridge that we forgot to throw out after like a month and a half - but for some reason we dont seem to have the stability problems with Prilosec (at least at our current pharmacy) that some have... lots of places (particularly if its colored like Christyn's) it goes bad by 10 or 14days.. the pure white stuff generally lasts a lot longer (at least for us!)

[Mary]

I don't know what might happen if a child is given a dose of Prilosec that's gone "bad"; however, a quick call to a local pharmacy would answer that question pretty quickly.

Any time a medication changes color or develops an odd odor, even if it hasn't reached it's expiration date, it's suspect and I think you made the right call. Even our unflavored Prilosec never smelled "bad"--it smelled like baking soda (sort of like, um, nothing *LOL*) and the flavored batches always smelled like grape and baking soda. Nothing unpleasant. We never kept it more than 30 days in the beginning, then we started having it compounded in 14-day batches.

If you feel the medication was past it's date and that the charge nurse acted in bad faith, you might consider reporting this to the hospital/state board of health. This sort of thing is very serious and, in some cases, might prove to be extremely harmful.