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 the prescribing of this drug to this patient?
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 place trust in you because of your position. With this trust comes power and responsibility, as well as an ethical and legal obligation to “do no harm.” It is important that you are 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 is in accordance with the regulations of the state in which you practice. Understanding how these regulations may affect the prescribing of certain drugs in different states may have a significant impact on your patient’s treatment plan. In this Assignment, you explore ethical and legal implications of scenarios and consider how to appropriately respond.
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 for addressing medication errors for your state or region, and 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.
- Think about two strategies that you, as an advanced practice nurse, 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 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.
Reminder: The College of Nursing requires that all papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and references. The College 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, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer 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.
Submit Your Assignment by Day 7 of Week 1
Sample Paper Week 1 Assignment
Walden NURS 6521 Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs
Advanced Pharmacology
Student’s Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Advanced Pharmacology
Ethical Considerations
Several Ethical issues may arise from medicine prescription error. The nursing ethical principle of autonomy and right to self-determination accords the patients a right to make their own treatment choices according to their views, beliefs and perceived benefits (Niemann et al. 2015). Therefore, the nurse is obligated to keep patients updated on the medical progress of the treatment process which includes involves errors. They also have to help patients, make informed decisions in deciding on mitigation measures.
Additionally, the principle of beneficence and no maleficence imposes to the nurses the duty to do what is best for patients and avoid causing harm to the patient respectively. Although prescription error can be harmful to the patient in terms of loss of life and quality of life primarily due to associated long-term disabilities, the prescribing nurses should minimize damage by informing patients and management of the error so that they can decide on the most appropriate remedy earliest possible.
Prescription errors are a reflection of problematic and unethical organizational culture as well as negligent nursing which violates the QSEN ethical nursing competences of such as safety driven culture. Consequently, Nurses and organizations can be sued for medical negligence which often leads to cancelation of practice license. The lawsuits have negative impacts on organizations as well in terms of heavy financial fines, lousy reputation, and revocation of practice license. Moreover, Nurses and healthcare organizations have an ethical obligation to admit mistakes. They are required to maintain honesty and truth-telling in communication with patients and their families to establish trust. The negative impacts of non-disclosure to patients can negatively impact on the family in terms of financial burden and emotional as well as erosion of trust. Patients family entrust nurses with the health; thus when an error occurs, they expect a disclosure and a promise of measures to prevent future recurrence of the failure.
Strategies to Guide Decision Making
When a medication error occurs, the nurses reporting approach should be based on the depth of information provided by the approach about the mistake, and the ability of the method to providing information that informs a sophisticated investigation of the specific errors to understand the nature and magnitude of the problem. As an advanced practice nurse, I would verbally report to the collaborating physician as it saves time thus enabling the application of countermeasures as early as possible. It also portrays my willingness as a nurse to communicate and recognize errors, which is a crucial aspect of nursing. Secondly, I would also consider a written report and attaching it to the patient’s story as it provides detailed information to facilitate an investigation that would help prevent future recurrence. It also enables other subsequent shift nurses to know about the medical history of the specific patient.
References
Niemann, D., Bertsche, A., Meyrath, D., Koepf, E. D., Traiser, C., Seebald, K., … & Bertsche, T.
(2015). A prospective three‐step intervention study to prevent medication errors in drug handling in paediatric care. Journal of clinical nursing, 24(1-2), 101-114.
What’s Coming Up in Module 2?
In the next module, you will examine the impact of changes in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes on patient drug therapy for cardiovascular disorders and the types of drugs prescribed to patients with respiratory disorders.
Looking Ahead: Week 2 Assignment
In Week 2, your Instructor will assign you a case study related to Assignment 1 by Day 1 of the week. Please make sure to review the “Course Announcements” area of the course to verify your assigned case study. Please plan ahead to ensure you have time to review your case study and Learning Resources in order to complete your Assignment on time.
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