NURS 6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

NURS 6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

NURS 6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

Write a 2- to 3-page paper that addresses the following:
• Explain the ethical and legal implications of the scenario you selected on all stakeholders involved, such as the prescriber, pharmacist, patient, and patient’s family.
• Describe strategies to address disclosure and nondisclosure as identified in the scenario you selected. Be sure to reference laws specific to state of Maryland.

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• Explain two strategies that you, as an advanced practice nurse, would use to guide your decision making in this scenario, including whether you would disclose your error. Be sure to justify your explanation.
• Explain the process of writing prescriptions, including strategies to minimize medication errors.

Assignment:
Scenario 1:
• A friend calls and asks you to prescribe a medication for her. You have this autonomy, but you don’t have your friend’s medical history. You write the prescription anyway.

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Advanced Pharmacology

Most fatal medical accidents and adverse outcomes in healthcare facilities are associated with drug administration error. The rate of medication errors in the US has increased significantly (Da Silva & Krishnamurthy, 2016). Thus, the government has enacted various healthcare policies and legal frameworks to lower medical errors and related complications and deaths. This case scenario involves prescribing medication to a friend who calls and requests a medication to be prescribed to her. Although the practitioner has autonomy, the required medical history is not presented. Nonetheless, the prescription is written.

Scenario’s Ethical and Legal Implications for the involved Stakeholders

            The selected scenario has some legal and ethical implications on various key stakeholders, including prescriber, pharmacist, patient, and patient’s family. The prescriber is the first victim of the series of activities involved in the medication administration incidents.  The medication was prescribed without adhering to the set guidelines. The prescriber writes the requested prescription without the patient’s medical history. The prescriber understands the legal requirement of accessing a patient’s medical history before writing any prescription. Additionally, the prescriber is aware of the ethical principle of non-maleficence, which states that medical practitioners should avoid causing harm to their clients (Casey, 2016). Therefore, this action is associate with ethically and legally justified error. The pharmacist is also liable for compounding the prescriber’s mistake. Secondly, the pharmacist should be concerned about the patient taking the medications. Therefore, a pharmacist should enquire patient’s demographic traits such as age, allergic reactions, and current medications before issuing the drugs. Thus, providing drugs without this information is acting against legal and ethical requirements. The last group of stakeholders in the patient and his or her family. They have not breached any ethical or legal guideline since they should take their drugs based on prescriber’s and pharmacists’ guidelines.

Strategies to Address Disclosure and Nondisclosure

            Laws for disclosure and nondisclosure in the US vary from one state to another. Therefore, practitioners should address disclosure and nondisclosure based on the guidelines provided by their state of practice. In this case, the strategies should be based on the state of Maryland’s Law. First, the prescriber would correct the error through a disclosure. The state of Maryland’s Law requires the pharmacist(s) to disclose to the patient if a medication error occurs. A corrective plan is developed if the incident indicates that a system problem caused the error. On the other hand, the prescriber can correct the error through non-disclosure. In this strategy, the prescriber would not disclose medical errors to patients and families for fear of being sued for acting against the set guidelines regarding disclosure and non-disclosure. According to Arfaa Law Group (2017), patients should report medical malpractice incidents for legal actions to be taken against care providers.

Decision-Making Strategies in this Scenario

The principles of integrity and honesty guide an advanced practice nurse’s response to this incident. The decision-making process would be guided by nurses’ professional standards and the code of ethics. Therefore, as an advanced practice nurse, I would disclose the patient’s medication error to prevent adverse outcomes.

The Process of Writing Prescriptions

A prescriber should access vital information, including the patient’s medical history, the laboratory reports, current medications, allergic reaction associated with drugs, and some demographic features such as age before making prescriptions. These aspects will guide in prescribing an appropriate medication, thus avoiding medication errors.

References

Arfaa Law Group. (2017). Medication Errors on the Rise in Maryland and Elsewhere. ARFAA Law Group. https://www.baltimoremedicalmalpracticelawyer.net/medication-errors-rise-maryland-elsewhere/

Casey, P. (2016). Beneficence and non-maleficence: confidentiality and careers in psychiatry. Irish Journal of psychological medicine, 33(4), 203-206.

Da Silva, B. A., & Krishnamurthy, M. (2016). The alarming reality of medication error: a patient case and review of Pennsylvania and National data. Journal of community hospital internal medicine perspectives, 6(4), 31758.