What underlying factors lead to Katie’s death?
A multitude of factors led to Katie’s death. The first factor is a history of drinking in her family which led her prone to liver damage and alcoholism. The dependence on alcohol would have adverse effects on her medication. Secondly the lack of education and awareness. Katie was uneducated hence unaware of the risk of taking her medication with medicine. This led to her dependence and abusing the drug instead of taking it for its intended purpose.
a). What educational interventions would you recommend to prevent unintentional overdoses? Explain.
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Whenever a patient fills a prescription at an emergency room, in the doctor’s room or pharmacy, it should be accompanied by a pamphlet containing details of the way they should take their medication. Katie was never warned not to take alcohol while under medication. Her death would have been prevented had she been aware. Patients should review the pamphlet and ask anything they do not understand. Being educated on will allow the patient to know what is likely to lead to an accidental overdose and take the necessary precautions (Bachyrycz, Takeda, Wittsrom & Bleske, 2019).
b). what motivational interventions directed toward prescribers or patients would you recommend to prevent unintentional overdoses?
The doctor should have emphasized for regular checkups in Kati’s prescription. In addition pharmacies should combine effort with doctors to encourage patients about regular checkups. An example of an incentive that could be motivation is for patients to get a discount on their medications if they regularly show up for checkups. This will give an opportunity for doctors and pharmacists to follow up on purposeful use of medicine
What obligation or legal interventions would you recommend preventing unintentional overdoses? Explain.
To prevent unintentional overdoses in the future, a legal intervention would be having strict enforcement on matters of prescription. There were chances that Katie would overdose in the future had she not done it on that night. As seen in the parking lot, Katie would still have bought the drug off someone even after her prescription was filled due to the built habit of depending on drugs. She could have easily overdosed on the drugs later. However, was there stricter enforcement of prescript dugs, Katie would have not accessed the extra drugs after her filled prescription. Strict rules and regulations about prescript drugs will make them available to only people in need of them (Powell, Pacula & Jacobson, 2018). This would help identify people who are dependent on drugs before they become addicts.
What changes in the rates of unintentional overdoses in the United States do you expect in the absence of the types of interventions that you identified in questions 2-4 Explain?
If the interventions of unintentional overdose are not addressed, the rates will sequentially go high in the United States of America. At the moment it is very easy for people to gain access to drugs that are legally prescribed hence making it easy to abuse them. It is worth noting that if there are more roadblocks between personal discovery and social gain of drugs it is easy for people to abuse them automatically increasing the rates of unintentional overdose. In addition, the lack of education and awareness means that people can easily sell, abuse, or ignore their prescriptions.
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Unintentional overdose deaths are preventable by taking strict measures on prescribed legal drugs. Choose to reduce harm today! Save a life!
References
Bachyrycz, A., Takeda, M. Y., Wittsrom, K., & Bleske, B. (2019). Opioid overdose response training in pharmacy education: An analysis of students’ perception of naloxone use for opioid overdose prevention. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning , 11 (2), 166-171.
Powell, D., Pacula, R. L., & Jacobson, M. (2018). Do medical marijuana laws reduce addictions and deaths related to pain killers? Journal of health economics , 58 , 29-42.
