Drugstore Shoulder Injuries from Vaccines: Who’s Affected?

Vaccines are an essential facet of the health and well-being of society, however, it is also important that these vaccines are administered safely and professionally. Many walk-in pharmacy clinics offer vaccination services to the public, an easy and affordable method of bringing vaccination to as many people as possible.

But some consumers claim that, after receiving a vaccination from a walk-in clinic, they have experienced injuries, especially to the shoulder. Consumers allege that their pharmacy technicians who administered a vaccine were not adequately trained, leading to drugstore shoulder injuries.

If you or someone you love have suffered from drugstore shoulder injuries after getting a vaccine at a walk-in clinic, you may be able to file a lawsuit and pursue compensation.

Drugstore Shoulder Injuries

For years, consumers have been reporting vaccines that have left them with soreness at the injection site in their shoulder for weeks. A 2015 Buffalo News report cites readers who claimed that they suffered from a number of drugstore shoulder injuries, including soreness, poor range of motion in that arm, and pain so severe it causes nausea.

They referred to these injuries as Shoulder Injury Related to Vaccine Administration (SIRVA). SIRVA has been described as “the rapid onset of shoulder pain and dysfunction persisting as a complication of deltoid muscle vaccination,” per a 2010 study.

These shoulder injuries are usually reported in adults, and generally occur “because a health provider injected a vaccine too high on the shoulder, or into the joint space instead of into muscle tissue,” reports the New York Times. “That may cause an inflammatory response leading to shoulder pain and limited motion.”

In a 2019 opinion published in The Pharmaceutical Journal, an anonymous London-based pharmacist relayed their own experiences with SIRVA after an injection, saying that their symptoms (including pain, inability to use the arm, lack of range/mobility, and sleepless nights)  lasted a long time, and were not completely resolved even after 12 months.

“Pharmacists should not inject patients if they are not completely sure of what they are doing; the consequences of getting it wrong are considerable for the patient and the profession,” they wrote.

Compensation for Drugstore Shoulder Injuries

The United States has a system in place to compensate people for vaccine-related injuries, called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The VICP is a no-fault system first begun in 1988 under federal law. Through the program, people can file claims of harms caused by vaccines, which are then evaluated. The program covers claims related to 15 childhood vaccines, along with the seasonal flu shot.

In August 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that payouts for vaccine shoulder injuries, including drugstore shoulder injuries, were on the rise, with some individuals receiving tens of thousands of dollars. Indeed, between 2011 and 2015, the government paid out about $18 million to 112 SIRVA victims, according to the WSJ.

About half of all claims to the program since 2017 have been specifically about shoulder injuries from vaccines.

Over the three decades since its creation, the program has compensated about 6,600 people a total of around $4.15 billion for injuries people claim were caused by vaccines. There are a few things to note here: firstly, that this is less than 10,000 cases out of billions of vaccine doses given to hundreds of millions of Americans. Moreover, about 70 percent of the awards given through this program have been settlements in cases where program officials did not find sufficient evidence to show that vaccines were the cause of the alleged injuries.

If you suffered a shoulder injury or other injury after receiving a flu shot or other vaccine injection at a walk-in pharmacy clinic, you may be able to join a potential class action lawsuit investigation and pursue compensation.