Human oversight takes place in every profession. Nursing practitioners have variable authoritarian power levels over medical services, medications, medical devices, and a controlled substance. However, medical errors happen in the healthcare sector that pose a danger to the patients' health and recovery, and it becomes fatal at times. These medical mistakes could be technical, judgmental, rule-based, system-based, expectation inaccuracies or knowledge-based (Sabatino et al., 2017). Medical practitioners and nurses are taught the process to reduce these medical mistakes. However, there are times when these errors occur, and providers get in dilemma whether to disclose the information or not. Ethical and legal obligations also impact their prescription of drugs. Regulations on drug prescriptions inhibit medical mistakes that are developing the main concern in the healthcare organization. To understand the legal and ethical issues associated with drug prescriptions, this paper explains a scenario where I prescribed drug to a friend who was not my patient, disclosure or nondisclosure, and the process of prescribing drugs.
Ethical and legal implications
My scenario's legal and ethical implications include failure to review the patient's past medical history and failure to document an assessment of the patient before making a prescription. Additionally, the drugs needed by the patients are controlled prescription that follows the procedure by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, n.d). Therefore, having not got a DEA authorization to prescribe the drugs, I committed legal misconduct. I was also not the patient's nurse, and I did not consult with their nurse before making prescriptions. Legally, drug prescriptions must involve communication and consultation about examination documentation and treatment to avoid making medical mistakes, making prescriptions of monitored drugs to friends or family members risk trial for diverting drugs or wrong prescription of controlled drugs (Ladd & Hoyt, 2016). Consequently, if I used the incorrect prescription form, I could be alleged of fraudulent activities.
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Strategies to address disclosure and nondisclosure
The nursing code necessitates that nurses report and disclose medical errors to the patient and the relevant authorities. The healthcare giver should advocate, protect, and promote patient’s health and safety rights. Nurses can accomplish that by ensuring that they are open to the patients regardless of the situations. The principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, and autonomy demand that caregivers always say the truth, thus the need to disclose any errors (Ladd & Hoyt, 2016). Most nurses might not expose the mistakes due to fear of losing their license, reputation, privileges and patients.
Failure to disclose or give all information might harm the patient, limit the patient’s involvement in their care, and cause mistrust between the patient and the provider (Ladd & Hoyt, 2016). Therefore, state and federal laws have been put in place to mitigate medical mistakes. The state law demands that caregivers and physicians report whichever medical errors and offer full information concerning the family or patient's mistake. In this scenario, I would employ the strategy of autonomy. Therefore, I would talk to my friend, who was the patient and inform them of the ethical and legal procedures involved in prescribing them drugs and acknowledge that I made a mistake that could harm them. Besides, I would involve their nurse to explain the correct procedure I ought to have taken and inform them of my error's potential implications. Finally, I would apologize for the medical mistake and offer to compensate for the financial resources linked with the mistake.
Process of writing prescriptions
It is important to follow the procedure of prescriptions to eliminate medical errors. Qualified healthcare providers write prescriptions. The procedure of writing prescriptions encompasses filling and taking prescriptive medications understandably and clearly. Prescriptions contain the prescriber's address and name, the name and strength of the drug, and the date of prescription ( Xu & Paschalidis, 2019 ). It is also important to include the administration instructions' sticker on the amount to be taken and frequency.
Prescribers should give complete and clear information to the patients to minimize medical mistakes. The patients should note the allergies, warnings, and side effects of the prescriptions. It is also important that prescribers of controlled drugs follow the guidelines offered by DEA for safety purposes and minimize drug abuse. The clearness of the prescriptions guarantees that pharmacists give patients the right drugs.
References
Drug Enforcement Administration. (n.d.-a). Code of federal regulations. Retrieved February 1, 2019, from https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/cfr/1300/1300_01.htm
Ladd, E., & Hoyt, A. (2016). Shedding light on nurse practitioner prescribing. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 12(3), 166–173. doi:10.1016/j.nurpra.2015.09.17
Sabatino, J. A., Pruchnicki, M. C., Sevin, A. M., Barker, E., Green, C. G., & Porter, K. (2017). Improving prescribing practices: A pharmacist‐led educational intervention for nurse practitioner students. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners , 29(5), 248–254. doi:10.1002/2327- 6924.12446
Xu, T., & Paschalidis, I. C. (2019, June). Learning models for writing better doctor prescriptions. In 2019 18th European Control Conference (ECC) (pp. 2454-2459). IEEE.
