Assignment; Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs Essay

Assignment; Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs Essay

Assignment; Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs Essay

Assignment; Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs Sample Essay

Nurse practitioners play a crucial role in the provision of care services that optimize on outcomes such as safety, quality, and efficiency. Often, they utilize evidence-based information to make informed decisions about the needs of their patients. Part of the nurse practitioners’ role is ensuring safe prescribing and use of medications by their patients. Factors such as patient’s age, disease status, and concurrent use of other medications influence the prescription decisions by the nurse practitioners. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore ethics around a medication error committed by a nurse practitioner. It also examines the strategies to address disclosure and non-disclosure, decision-making, and the process of writing prescriptions.

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Ethical and Legal Implications

The assigned case study is of a nurse practitioner who has made a medication error while prescribing a drug to a 5-year-old patient. The dosing for the medication is for an adult patient. The case study is associated with significant ethical and legal implications to the nurse practitioner, pharmacist, patient, and her family. First, nurse practitioners should promote safety and quality through safe prescribing in their practice. The nurse should demonstrate competencies in different medications, side effects, indications, and collaboration with other healthcare providers to ensure safe medication use. They should also have an in-depth understanding of the medication requirements for patients of different age groups and factors influencing the selected interventions (Trockel et al., 2020). Therefore, the nurse practitioner is legally responsible for predisposing the patient to unintended harm from the medication error. The error also violates the ethics of nursing practice such as ensuring justice, non-maleficence and beneficence.

The error also has ethical and legal implications to the pharmacist. Accordingly, nurse practitioners should collaborate with pharmacists to ensure safety in medication use. The professional roles of the pharmacist include ensuring the dispensed medications are appropriate for the patient’s age and condition. The pharmacist faces lawsuit of negligence for failing to cross check the prescription against the patient’s data before dispensing the medication (Mansour et al., 2020). He has also violated the ethics of professional standards of practice where the focus should be on ensuring safety, quality, and efficiency in the patient care process.

The error also has implications to the child and her family. Medication errors may cause unintended harm to the patients. The side and adverse effects associated with the drugs have a negative effect on the patient’s health. Medication errors may also necessitate the need for hospitalizations and increased care costs being incurred by the family. In some cases, severe complications may arise leading to premature mortalities. Cumulatively, the effects lower the child’s and family’s quality of life (Mansour et al., 2020). The error violates the patient and family’s right to safe and high-quality care, hence, the ethics and legal issues associated with the problem.

Strategies to Address Disclosure and Non-disclosure

Patients have a right to informed care from their healthcare providers. This includes being informed about error occurrence and potential impacts on their lives. Healthcare providers have the mandate of disclosing information about the care given and needs to their patients. The disclosure assures patients their right to justice and informed care. However, issues such as medication errors predispose healthcare providers to the ethical dilemma of disclosing the information to patients or not. Factors such as fear of malpractice threats, lawsuits, and disciplinary processes affect the decision of healthcare providers to disclose the information in their practice (Mansour et al., 2020).

Health organizations have adopted several measures to prevent medical errors in practice. However, medical errors remain inevitable, as seen from the statistics that more than one million errors are reported annually in America (Mansour et al., 2020). Therefore, an appropriate intervention for the nurse practitioner would be informing the parents or guardians of the five year old child about the error. States have adopted measures to address discloses and non-disclosure of safety issues in health organizations. For example, the state of California encourages health organizations and providers to disclose errors committed to be used as learning opportunities for error reduction. The laws require hospitals to have reporting mechanisms that encourage transparency and prohibits victimization of the involved. The recommendations align with the apology laws that seek to mitigate similar errors in the future practice of healthcare providers (Ross & Newman, 2021).

Strategies

One of the strategies I would adopt to address the situation is employing the model of ethical decision-making by the American Counseling Association. The model provides practical steps that nurses can use to resolve dilemmas in their practice. The first step is problem identification where the focus is obtaining information that led to the situation. Facts are obtained to guide in the decision-making. The second step is applying the code of ethics by the American Nurses Association to the problem. The third step is determining the dimensions the dilemma has and generating potential actions that may be needed in the situation. The fourth step is considering the consequences of all the actions and selecting the best course of action. The last step is evaluating the adopted action to determine its effectiveness (Reiner, 2023). The second strategy would be collaborating with the physician or unit manager to analyze the situation and the appropriate potential actions. I will disclose the error. As noted initially, patients have a right to informed care and justice. As a result, I will apply apology laws in disclosing the error and use it as an opportunity to learn and prevent similar incidences in the future.

Process of Writing Prescriptions

Nurse practitioners should consider a specific process in writing prescriptions to minimize errors. First, the prescription should contain the patient’s biodata. This includes name, age, sex, gender. It should also contain a medical diagnosis which informed the prescription. The pharmacist will use the information to confirm the accuracy and need for the prescription. Third, the nurse should ensure completeness in the prescribed medication. This includes ensuring the medication name is clear, with strength, frequency of use, route, duration, and refills if any. The nurse should also provide supplemental instructions if any and include their name and signature. Some of the strategies to minimize and prevent medication errors include prescriber training and education, teamwork and supervision, incorporating input from the pharmacists, and utilizing electronic prescribing systems (Sutton et al., 2020).

Conclusion

In summary, the medication error is associated with ethical and legal concerns to the stakeholders. Laws guide disclosure and non-disclosure of medical errors. Nurse practitioners should be informed about safe prescribing practices. Organizations should adopt strategies to minimize medical and medication errors.

References

Mansour, R., Ammar, K., Al-Tabba, A., Arawi, T., Mansour, A., & Al-Hussaini, M. (2020). Disclosure of medical errors: Physicians’ knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) in an oncology center. BMC Medical Ethics, 21(1), 74. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020-00513-2

Reiner, G. (2023). A Systematic Approach to Ethical Decision-making for Nurses. Healthecareers.Com. https://www.healthecareers.com/nurse-resources/the-pulse-february-2023/a-systematic-approach-to-ethical-decision-making-for-nurses

Ross, N. E., & Newman, W. J. (2021). The Role of Apology Laws in Medical Malpractice. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online. https://doi.org/10.29158/JAAPL.200107-20

Sutton, R. T., Pincock, D., Baumgart, D. C., Sadowski, D. C., Fedorak, R. N., & Kroeker, K. I. (2020). An overview of clinical decision support systems: Benefits, risks, and strategies for success. Npj Digital Medicine, 3(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-020-0221-y

Trockel, M. T., Menon, N. K., Rowe, S. G., Stewart, M. T., Smith, R., Lu, M., Kim, P. K., Quinn, M. A., Lawrence, E., Marchalik, D., Farley, H., Normand, P., Felder, M., Dudley, J. C., & Shanafelt, T. D. (2020). Assessment of Physician Sleep and Wellness, Burnout, and Clinically Significant Medical Errors. JAMA Network Open, 3(12), e2028111. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.28111

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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 your state.
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.

Please use the following scenario for this assignment:
As a nurse practitioner, you prescribe medications for your patients. You make an error when prescribing medication to a 5-year-old patient. Rather than dosing him appropriately, you prescribe a dose suitable for an adult.