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

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

Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

What type of drug should you prescribe based on your patient’s diagnosis? How much of the drug should the patient receive? How often should the drug be administered? When should the drug not be prescribed? Are there individual patient factors that could create complications when taking the drug? Should you be prescribing drugs to this patient? How might different state regulations affect this patient’s prescribing of this drug?

These are some of the questions you might consider when selecting a treatment plan for a patient.

As an advanced practice nurse prescribing drugs, you are held accountable for people’s lives every day. Patients and their families will often trust you because of your position. With this trust comes power and responsibility and an ethical and legal obligation to “do no harm.” You must be aware of current professional, legal, and ethical standards for advanced practice nurses with prescriptive authority. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the treatment plans and administration/prescribing of drugs are in accordance with the state’s regulations in which you practice. Understanding how these regulations may affect prescribing certain drugs in different states may significantly impact your patient’s treatment plan. In this Assignment, you explore scenarios’ ethical and legal implications and consider how to respond appropriately.

To Prepare

• Review the Resources for this module and consider the legal and ethical implications of prescribing prescription drugs, disclosure, and nondisclosure.
• Review the scenario assigned by your Instructor for this Assignment.
• Search specific laws and standards for prescribing prescription drugs and addressing medication errors for your state or region. Reflect on these as you review the scenario assigned by your Instructor.
• Consider the ethical and legal implications of the scenario for all stakeholders involved, such as the prescriber, pharmacist, patient, and patient’s family. NURS 6521 week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs
• As an advanced practice nurse, think about two strategies that you would use to guide your ethically and legally responsible decision-making in this scenario, including whether you would disclose any medication errors.

By Day 7 of Week 1

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 selected scenario. Be sure to reference laws specific to your state.
• As an advanced practice nurse, explain two strategies that you 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.

Reminder: The School of Nursing requires that all papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and references. The School of Nursing Writing Template with Instructions provided at the Walden Writing Center offers an example of those required elements (available at https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/templates/general#s-lg-box-20293632). All papers submitted must use this formatting.

Submission and Grading Information

To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:

• Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK1Assgn+last name+first initial. (extension)” as the name.
• Click the Week 1 Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.
• Click the Week 1 Assignment  You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.
• Next, click on the Browse My Computer button from the Attach File area. Find the document you saved as “WK1Assgn+last name+first initial. (extension)” and click Open.
• If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.
• Click on the Submit button to complete your submission. NURS 6521 week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

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SOLUTION

The Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescription Drugs

Errors in drug administration can result in deadly medical accidents that may result in the patient’s demise. Through a reporting system, policies and regulatory frameworks exist to reduce the occurrence of such incidents and other medical errors. The case scenario entails prescribing medication to a child according to the norms of an elderly patient. Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescription Drugs for NURS 6521 Week 1 Assignment Several individuals are frequently impacted by and implicated in the chain of the incorrect subscription. The patient is the one who is profoundly affected.

Ethical and legal implications for all involved stakeholders

In the sequence of events involving the delivery of medication recommended according to the standard of an older patient, the physician comes first. The error originates with the prescriber. The error is morally and legally improper. First, the prescriber is aware of the patient’s status as a child. According to the average senior patient, administering medications to a youngster puts the child at risk of overdosing and exposes the patient to potential legal action. Also accountable for aggravating the prescriber’s error is the pharmacist. The pharmacists should be invested in the patient receiving the prescribed medications. Before prescribing medication, it is essential to inquire about and validate the patient’s demographics, such as age. The patient and his or her family have not violated any moral or legal principles. Patients believe their physicians to be accurate and take their prescribed prescriptions accordingly. They are not trained experts. Therefore, both the physician and the pharmacists are morally and legally responsible for the incorrect prescription. Ethical and Legal Consequences of Prescription Drugs, NURS 6521 week 1 assignment.

Strategies to Disclosure and Non-Disclosure

Medical professionals acknowledge the occurrence of medical blunders in their field. Health institutions, state governments, and the federal government have developed protocols and mechanisms for reporting and responding to medical errors. Texas lacked a comprehensive disclosure mechanism until June 20, 2003 (when the state legislature passed House Bill 1614 (Quality and patient safety, n.d). Despite having modest similarities with other legislation levels, the law is unique to Texas’s requirements. The critical component of the law is the requirement that mental hospitals, hospitals, and ambulatory surgical clinics record medical errors in detail.

Benefits of the technique include its capacity to increase surveillance of practitioners who make frequent errors and the severity of the errors that warrant legal measures. It could be implemented to identify and punish practitioners liable for widespread negligence and other errors. The technique could potentially uncover quack practitioners who entered the profession without the necessary prerequisites, practitioners with insufficient training, or pseudo-practitioners. To stress the gravity with which medical errors are dealt with, the health care industry must emphasize the documentation of medical errors and the implementation of legal frameworks to handle cases at the court level. The technique would increase the practitioner’s focus and reduce mortality and other adverse drug responses harmful to the patient’s health.

Decision-Making Strategies for This Scenario and Disclosure of Error

Values of ethics and honesty dictate the response to the circumstance. The two principles govern one’s relationship with professional ethics and behavior codes. Consequently, employing professional rules and ethics are the two most important responses to the issue. For instance, ethical principles such as Kantian deontology define ethics or morality as action based on the rule of law regardless of the actor’s and recipient’s consequences (Barrow & Khandhar, 2019). State law demands to report on the situation in this instance. I would disclose the medical error per ethical norms. The code of conduct specifies how physicians should interact with patients. For example, implementing the code of conducting oneself well in all circumstances and responding to the scenario would necessitate entering a report and fast-tracking the child to guarantee the threat is controlled—ethical and Legal Consequences of Prescription Drugs, NURS 6521 week 1 assignment.

The Process of Writing Prescriptions

Before prescribing medications, the practitioner and pharmacist should analyze the patient’s laboratory tests and demographic characteristics. Analyses of these characteristics help prescribers choose the dosage and type of drugs to administer to a patient. In addition, the prescription must be reexamined to ensure that it matches the patient’s needs. If the practitioner lacks expertise or experience regarding the prescription, they must assume responsibility for any errors. Doing so would reduce drug errors caused by ego.

References

Barrow, J. M., & Khandhar, P. B. (2019). Deontology. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

Quality and Patient Safety. (n.d). Public and Private Policy Medical Errors and Patient Safety. Retrieved from http://www.qups.org/med_errors.php?c=individual_state&s=44&t=all