Prescription of drugs is a process that requires careful consideration of various aspects to ensure optimum outcome and reduce the occurrence of incidences. Legal standards are imperative in ensuring healthcare practitioners understand what they cannot do, while ethical standards are significant in outlining right and wrong. To ensure a reduced occurrence of medication errors and incidences, legal frameworks are implemented and policies that ensure the same through a reporting system (Pauline Hood, 2020). This case scenario involves the prescription of expensive drugs to a patient who recently mentioned their financial difficulties.
According to the World Health Organization, rational prescribing requires the patient to receive the appropriate medication in doses that meet their specific requirements for an adequate period of time and at an affordable cost (Britain, 2002). A nurse practitioner’s ethical role is to rationally utilize resources to ensure that ineffective costs are avoided during prescription.
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This scenario is more inclined to ethical consideration of medication prescribing. Pharmacoeconomics involves the consideration of the cost of medication to the healthcare system and society. Prescription of relatively expensive medications that are not necessary for the patient’s recovery is unethical of the nurse practitioner. The ethical prescription of medication involves rational consideration of the cost of the medication and the efficacy of the medication to the specific requirements of the patient (Pauline Hood, 2020). NURS 6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs
Prescription of such expensive drugs is only ethical when the medication is necessary to recover the patient. In such instances, the nurse practitioner should be able to rationally handle the situation and explain the importance of the medication to the patient (Pozgar, 2020). Prescribing expensive medications may cause health insurance companies to dispute covering the expenses and deny the patient the right to medication.
The patients and their families rely of the health care practitioner to offer them the best services at an affordable price. In a scenario whereby the patient is prescribed for expensive medicine, it’s the patient and the family who face the challenge of getting the medication and adhering to treatment. Hence, the nurse practitioner and other prescribers have the responsibility of allowing the patient to acquire medications and hence treatment with ease (Pauline Hood, 2020).
The pharmacist is also a stakeholder in the rational prescription of and administration of medications. In such a scenario like this, the pharmacist plays a significant role in ensuring the patient receives social justice by safeguarding the patient’s economic concerns. The pharmacist has the role of consulting with the prescriber on the necessity of an overpriced medication as well as with the insurance company to explain the necessity of such medications to address the patient’s economic needs before dispensing the medication (Robert Veatch, 2010). NURS 6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs
Handling ethical issues and dilemmas is an additive quality of a competent nurse practitioner. A good nurse practitioner should be accountable for all the daily operations and take responsibility for all the actions that he/she has done in the line of duty (Pozgar, 2020). Addressing this scenario requires immediate efforts to contact the patient or the family and inquire about compliance with the prescribe
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