Free Essay on Ethical and Legal Implications, Strategies to Address Disclosure

The goal of any medical prescription helps to make the patients feel better and have a quick recovery. In many cases, a patient’s conditions may require a diverse set of medications, which may be prescribed to help the patient feel relieved or recover sooner. However, the prescription of any mediation requires more than just mere writing that is handed over to pharmacists. One of the significant considerations that pharmacists have to battle with is the degree of ethics in the medical field (Davidson et al., 2018). In this case, medical practitioners are regulated not only by ethics but also by legal implementations that may vary from one state to the other. Therefore, any medical practitioner needs to consider the underlying regulations that govern medical prescriptions and the effects involved when the regulations are violated. Thus, the essay will critically elucidate on the regulations imposed by the Mississippi state, when it comes to prescription of medicine by a pharmacist.

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The Ethical and Legal Implications of the Scenario

Pharmacists are given the mandate to administer and prescribe medications that have effects on the patients. Therefore, any prescription should follow a strict set of regulations outlined by the state to reduce the chances of violating ethics and legal implication. The state of Mississippi has a set of regulations pertaining to help regulate the administering of controlled substances, under The Food and Drugs Act. The prescription of drugs to a friend without considering their medical history affects not only the ethics of nursing but also alters the Mississippi’s regulations. “All prescriptions for controlled substances must be written in strict compliance with Mississippi Code, Sections 41-29-101 through 41-29-311 and Title 21 of U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Part 1306” (Brown et al., 2017). Pharmacists and the prescribers are mandated not to prescribe or administer controlled substances to any patient, without considering or reviewing their medical history. Therefore, prescribing any medication to the patient in the scenario may violate section 604 of Mississippi’s Food and Drug Act (Hammer, 2019).

On the contrary, it is illegal for a medical prescription for any patient without the physician’s intervention in examining the patient. All the patients should only be administered drugs after an extensive and critical assessment has been conducted to determine not only their medical history but also to consider their condition. Family members are prohibited from administering medication to patients or family members without considering the patient’s medical history, or their condition.

Strategies to Address Disclosure and Nondisclosure

Disclosure of information and errors involved in prescription may be one of the hardest and complicated procedures for many pharmacists to acknowledge, especially considering the consequences. One of the strategies to address disclosure is through openly discussing what transpired to the situation at hand, and what could be used to overcome the situation. In the given scenario, the patient did not disclose medical history, which may limit the possibility of gaining a better understanding of medical history. Therefore, pharmacists should utilize ethics in avoiding to disclose the patient’s details, as a strategic way of ensuring the patients disclose all the relevant information to them, during a prescription.

Decision-Making Guidelines

One of the considerations to make while making any medical decision is the incorporation of ethics in practice, which not only helps reduce medical errors but increases transparency. The use of ethics in decision making will help to report errors that might occur during the prescription. Therefore, using ethics, as the backbone regulations, helps reduce the possibility of prescribing the wrong dose, among other medical errors. Secondly, the assessment of the outcomes is another factor to consider when making decisions in the medical field. Pharmacists should consider this concept to minimize errors during the decision making process.

Prescription Process

The prescription of any controlled substance should be prescribed following Mississippi’s code of conduct, which included the assessment of the medical history of the patient to ensure that strength of the prescription is regulated. The essence of factoring in medical history helps to reduce the strength and dosage of the prescription, aiming at reducing the effects of the prescription to the patient. Therefore, it is the collective responsibility of the prescriber and the patient to cooperate to ensure that the correct prescription is attained fully.

References

Brown, R., Clayton, B., Damiens, A., Keyes, N., McPherson, G. A., & Wiygul, A. E. (2017). Opioid and Naloxone Prescribing Practices in Mississippi (Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi University for Women). https://media.proquest.com/media/hms/PRVW/1/YzJoF?_a=ChgyMDIwMDYwNDE5MTc1MjQ5NToyNDQzMTQaCk9ORV9TRUFSQ0giDzEwNS4xNjMuMTgyLjE2NCoFMTg3NTAyCjIzODk3Njg1Nzg6EU9wZW52aWV3UGFnZUltYWdlQgEwUgZPbmxpbmVaAkZUYgNQUldqCjIwMTcvMDEvMDFyCjIwMTcvMTIvMzF6AIIBHVAtMTAwODc0OS1udWxsLW51bGwtbnVsbC1udWxskgEGT25saW5lygEA0gEWRGlzc2VydGF0aW9ucyAmIFRoZXNlc6oCJk9TOkVNUy1VbkF1dGhEb2NWaWV3LWdldFByZXZpZXdQZGZMaW5rwgICUETKAhNEaXNzZXJ0YXRpb24vVGhlc2lz0gIBWfICAPoCAU6CAwNXZWI%3D&_s=pMWoOVjBW0P6cR4GKEAooo%2Fdw1w%3D

Davidson, P., Rushton, C. H., Kurtz, M., Wise, B., Jackson, D., Beaman, A., & Broome, M. (2018). A social-ecological framework: A model for addressing ethical practice in nursing. Journal of clinical nursing, 27(5-6), e1233-e1241. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14158

Hammer, M. J. (2019). Beyond the Helix: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications in Genomics. In Seminars in oncology nursing. WB Saunders. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soncn.2018.12.007