Drug Prescribing & Clinical Negligence: Mitigating Risk in Medical Facilities - Essay Sample

Introduction

Drugs are often selected based on their important features and the characteristics of the patient, such as genetic determinants, age, and other medical problems (Satoskar et al., 2017). Most clinical negligence claims are always traced to doctors' medical errors. Inappropriate prescribing can bring huge losses to medical facilities partly due to claims and a damaged reputation in the medical business environment. Therefore, in light of this, medical facilities should ensure that their doctors possess adequate knowledge of the patient's characteristics and health to enable them to practice safe prescriptions.

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Ethical and Legal Implications of the Scenario

Notably, doctors are often trusted with the health of patients, and they are required to operate within the confines of medical law to ensure that they offer the right prescription (Satoskar et al., 2017). In this scenario, there are numerous ethical and legal implications of prescribing a dose of an adult to a child aged 5 years. Undoubtedly these implications affect various stakeholders key among them the prescriber and the patient. Regarding the prescriber, they always play an instrumental role in prescribing drugs. From a medical standpoint, ethical standards require that the prescriber ascertain important patient characteristics such as age before choosing a suitable dose. Moreover, the prescriber in the scenario is legally bounded to ensure that the bestowed prescription authority is not used to contravene basic medical laws. Pharmacists are always required to critically assess the patient's age before providing drugs (Satoskar et al., 2017). From the scenario, the pharmacist is likely to affect the facility's reputation due to the negligence. Undoubtedly, patients often bear the brunt of clinical negligence. The health of the 5-year-old is likely to be adversely affected because of the prescriber and pharmacist's lack of ethical and legal considerations during prescription. Additionally, the patient's family will be affected by the unethical and illegal prescription since they will use more resources to address the wrong prescription's resultant negative effects.

Strategies to Address Disclosure and Nondisclosure

Doctors often face a dilemma on whether to adopt a disclosure or nondisclosure approach regarding their medical errors. Disclosure of medical errors, especially in prescription, is critical in providing the patient with vital information that will help them seek immediate remedy (Westrick & Jacob, 2016). When the prescriber chooses to adopt nondisclosure approach, the patient is more likely to be harmed due to the continued administration of the drug that is suitable for adults. Disclosure and disclosure can be addressed by seeking more information on factors that influenced the prescription of the drugs. Also, nondisclosure can be addressed by recording the patient's medical log to ensure that the prescribed drugs are indicated for review at the request of the patient's family. The Virginia law, 12VAC35-105-620, requires that medical errors are reviewed quarterly to ensure that quality assurance is guaranteed (Westrick & Jacob, 2016). Undeniably, this helps in addressing disclosure and nondisclosure issues relating to the prescription of drugs.

Strategies for Decision Making

Understandably, various strategies can be used to effectively guide decision making in the medical environment. Since the scenario involves the wrong prescription of drugs to a patient aged 5 years, as an advanced practice nurse, I would ensure that I provide medical advice on how the situation can be remedied. Further, I would gather more information about the patient to ensure that subsequent prescription is based on all the patient's characteristics to guarantee the re-occurrence of the error. More importantly, I will involve the patient's family in the prescription process to ensure that the patient's underlying medical conditions are ascertained to curb a similar error. Still, I will disclose the error to the patient's family as ethical and legal standards as per the Virginia Law requires that medical errors are disclosed to enable the adoption of remedial approaches that will inevitably curtail the adverse effects.

Process of Writing Prescriptions

Doctors' negligence always causes most medical errors during prescriptions (Cavallo et al., 2013). Therefore, in light of this, writing a prescription must be observed to minimize errors. In writing prescriptions, the prescriber's information, such as name, contact information, and office address, should be indicated. Below the prescriber's information, the patient's information is indicated. The section should include the patient's full name, sex, age, date of birth, and home address. Further, the recipe (Rx) is included where the dose and dosage form of the medication being prescribed is indicated (Cavallo et al., 2013). Subsequently, signature (Sig) is included, demonstrating instructions to the patient on how to take the drugs. Moreover, dispensing instructions (Disp) are included to enable the pharmacist to know how much drugs are required for the patient (Cavallo et al., 2013). Additionally, the number of refills (Rf) is indicated to specify the number of times the patient will use the prescribed drugs. The process is ended by the prescriber's signature. In some instances, the prescriber's National Provider Identifier (NPI) can be included.

Conclusion

It should be noted that medical errors can bring adverse effects on patients' health. Medical practitioners should always ensure that they have adequate knowledge about the patient's characteristics before prescriptions. From ethical and legal standpoints, doctors must assess their practices and establish whether they are operating within the outlined ethical and legal standards in the medical field. More importantly, doctors should ensure that they adopt a disclosure strategy to enable patients to understand medical errors that will assist in seeking needed interventions.

References

Cavallo, P., Pagano, S., & Carpinelli, L. (2013). The drug prescription process: A network medicine approach. In Handbook of Systems and Complexity in Health (pp. 537-562).

Springer, New York, NY. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-4998-0_32

Satoskar, R. S., Rege, N., & Bhandarkar, S. D. (2017). Pharmacology and pharmacotherapeutics. Elsevier India. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=f9LQDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq

Westrick, S. J., & Jacob, N. (2016). Disclosure of errors and apology: Law and ethics. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 12(2), 120-126. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1555415515009708