Ethical and Legal Implications of Drug Prescription
Among the many challenges that are encountered in nursing practice include ethical and
legal aspects. These two challenges are majorly associated with the complexity of the profession
and the general clinical settings. There are different aspects of challenges associated with ethical
and legal frameworks of nursing practice. Among the most common one is drug prescription.
Today, Robertson & Long (2018) assert that cases of wrong prescriptions have been on the rise
and many people have begun paying attention to this clinical issue. The people who are highly
faced with this challenge are mostly the nurses. For them, compromising patients' prescriptions
comes at high legal and ethical costs and might lead to a greater career loss. That explains why
nurses are extensively taught on the procedures and general aspects associated with
prescriptions. Though this is meant to ensure that they may not make mistakes, nurses have been
seen to make errors that have made a huge negative impact on their career, the healthcare setting,
the organizations involved, the patients, and also many other stakeholders. The ethical and legal
responses made by nurses in these cases should be supported appropriately since in most cases,
these issues erase trust, cause harm to the patients, and also have a major blow to the quality of
care (De Oliveira, Castro-Alves, Kendall & McCarthy, 2021). This paper discusses the legal and
ethical implications of drug prescription, with a key consideration of the given case study
whereby a 5 year old is given an adult dosage.
Ethical and Legal Implications
For nurses, the prescription process should be approached cautiously and with great
responsibility especially with the patient's safety in consideration. The kind of errors seen in this
case study represents one of the many issues facing the nursing profession and in very many
ways affects the other stakeholders associated with the same. In this case, among the
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stakeholders that are implicated include the prescriber. In this case, the nurse practitioner is liable
for all the misfortunes of wrong prescriptions. In cases of medication and drug prescription, other
stakeholders that are implicated include the patient caretakers and family, the patient, and the
pharmacist. This is mainly due to the roles they all play in drug prescription and also in cases of
medical errors. For the nurses, they are held responsible for the actions and behavior that is
consistent or an approach that directs patient to medication.
The code of ethics guides them to a certain standard that should always be established in
their decisions (Robertson & Long, 2018). In this case, the nurse should have protected the
patient from any medical harm especially since they are accountable for any issues arising from
the doses they prescribe. The existing nurse practice act holds them, above any other stakeholder,
liable. For the family, this comes as a great challenge since their loved one will not feel better
which means added responsibilities and huge demand in terms of health costs and other forms of
care. The patient too is implicated in this mess since they hold the greatest losses in terms of
health. The clinical setting too stands to lose in terms of trust from future patients due to the loss
in quality care.
Strategies to address disclosure and nondisclosure
Nurses are ethically obligated to disclose all relevant information that is vital in making
informed decisions regarding a patient. According to Korngiebel, Thummel & Burke (2017) the
nursing code of ethics requires nurses to report any sort of medication errors to relevant
authorities as it is their duty to protect, promote, and advocate for patient health safety. Being
honest with patients regardless of the circumstances supports the medical principles of
autonomy, non-maleficence, and beneficence (Korngiebel et al., 2017). In such a case whereby a
nurse makes an error in prescribing medication, failure to disclose the mistake is a clear
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indication that the nurse puts their interest above that of their patient hence undermining the
ethical principles of healthcare. Federal and state regulations have been established that stipulate
the strategies to disclose and non-disclose medical errors. The Texas State’s bill of rights
requires for full disclosure of medical errors (Texas Health and Human Services, n.d). According
to the regulations, nurses among other healthcare providers are required to report medical