Prescription Drug Ethical and Legal Points
What medication do you have to prescribe on your affected person’s situation? How a lot ought to the affected person take? When ought to the medication be taken? When is it not prescribed? Are there any patient-specific traits that might trigger points with the drug? Do you have to deal with this affected person with medication?
These are some questions you ask your self earlier than selecting a affected person’s remedy technique. Day-after-day, as an APRN offering medication, you’re accountable for individuals’s lives. As a result of of your place, sufferers and their households usually belief you. To “do no hurt” is an ethical and authorized dedication that comes with belief. It’s crucial that you’re conscious of present skilled, authorized, and moral necessities for APRNs. You’ll consider the moral and authorized penalties of circumstances and learn how to reply appropriately.
1st case:
You prescribe medication as a nurse practitioner. You misprescribe medicine to a 5-year-old. You give him an grownup dose as an alternative of a toddler’s.
Case 2:
An outdated good friend calls and desires you to prescribe a drug. You may have autonomy, however not your good friend’s well being historical past. You continue to write the script.
third case:
You discover one other NP writing a prescription for her non-patient husband. It is a narcotic prescription. You’re undecided about reporting the incident.
Case four:
You learn a pharmacoeconomics journal article throughout your hospital lunch break. You recall a couple of sufferers who these days expressed monetary issues. You surprise if some of the costly medication you prescribed are serving to the sufferers’ well being and high quality of life.
Prep:
Look at Chapter 1 of Arcangelo and Peterson’s textual content, in addition to publications from the ANA, Anderson and Townsend, the DEA, and Philipsend and Soeken.
Choose one of the 4 conditions.
Prescriber, pharmacist, affected person, and affected person’s household ought to all think about the moral and authorized penalties of the case.
Contemplate two ways in which you, as an APN, would make the most of that can Help you make moral and authorized choices on this scenario.
Retaining in thoughts:
Clarify the state of affairs’s moral and authorized penalties for all events, together with the prescriber, pharmacist, affected person, and affected person’s household.
Describe two decision-making processes you, as an APN, would make the most of on this case.
The moral and authorized issues of prescription drugs for nurse practitioners
Prescription Drug Ethical and Legal Points
Skilled ethics are unwritten guidelines. They stem from the idea that nobody ought to deliberately injure herself or others. It describes a medical blunder within the context of healthcare skilled apply. It discusses the state of affairs’s moral and authorized implications, in addition to mitigation choices.
Penalties ethique
A nurse practitioner gave a five-year-old the improper medication dosage. As a substitute of the right dose, the nurse prescribed an grownup dose. Arcangelo, Peterson, Wilbur, and Reinhold (2017) advise nurses to at all times know the kind of remedy sufferers require earlier than prescribing. They state that weight is the first determinant in selecting dosage for kids. The dosage for every kilogram of a toddler’s physique weight have to be clearly said (Arcangelo et al., 2017). The prescriber, a Nurse Practitioner, is accountable for assessing doctor medicine data and prescribing the precise prescription. Within the foregoing case, the nurse has failed in his job and could also be fired, have his license revoked, or be prosecuted. The teenager might endure from overdosing points because of this of the blunder. This would possibly result in lawsuits, job losses for the nurse and pharmacist, and a tarnished hospital fame. Based on Brown (2013), most doctor-patient claims stem from drug errors.
Determination-making methods
The primary technique for a practising nurse could be to cease giving the improper dosage. I might then apologize to the kid’s dad and mom or guardians for my errors. Based on Guilod (2013), failing to report pharmaceutical errors might end in monetary losses from lawsuits and calls for from sufferers or their households. Then I might go to the pharmacist and ask for an accurate dosage utilizing the correct paediatric prescription procedures. Finally, I might present regret and settle for any punishment meted out for my mistake.
Second, conduct a root-cause Assessment to establish long-term corrective and preventative measures. The hospital administration would probably rapidly appoint a staff or somebody to analyze the blunder. I might Help the investigators perceive my mistake. This collaboration will help everybody discover the foundation of the error. Based on Crigger and Holcomb (2008), work stress might trigger nurses to misprescribe medicines. The long-term strategy is to rent further nurses to alleviate workload. The hospital may additionally add dosage verification factors between prescribing nurses.
Conclusion
Nurse practitioners make errors on a regular basis in healthcare. Whereas some of these errors could also be detrimental to the practitioner’s profession and sufferers’ well being, others might not be. This paper has confirmed that medicine errors in pediatrics can have severe results for sufferers, households, hospitals, and docs. Probably the most moral factor to do in such conditions is to confess the error and try to mitigate the consequences. Prescription errors could be prevented by figuring out and eliminating their main causes.
References
Arcangelo, V. P., et al (2017). Superior pharmacotherapeutics: A sensible strategy (4th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, PA.
N. Crigger, L. Holcomb (2008). Rational prescribing improves nurse practitioner apply. JNP, four(2), 120-125.
Obi, O (2013). Legal Features of Medical Error Disclosure. 2(three), e31.
S. (2013, August eight). Secure prescribing medical regulation and ethics Medical Protection. Retrieved February 26, 2018 from http://www.medicalprotection.org/uk/about-mps/media-centre/media-galleryGould, J., & Bain, H. (2022). Rules and Apply of Nurse Prescribing. SAGE.
Felmly, L.M. and Sade, R.M., 2022. Ethical controversies associated to the care of an intravenous drug abuser with endocarditis. In Infective Endocarditis (pp. 307-326). Content material Repository Solely!.
