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Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

Drug administration error causes some of the fatal medical accidents that could result in a patient’s death. Policies and legal frameworks exist to reduce the occurrence of such incidences, and other medical errors, through a reporting system. The case scenario involves prescribing medication to a child using the elderly patients’ standards. Several people are often affected and implicated in the chain of the wrong subscription, and it is the patient that is profoundly affected.

Ethical and legal implications for all involved stakeholders

The prescriber occupies the first position in the chain of events involving the administration of medication prescribed according to the standard of an elderly patient. The mistake begins with the prescriber. The error is ethically and legally unjustified. First, the prescriber is fully aware that the patient is a child. Prescribing drugs for a child according to the standard elderly patient places the child at risk of overdoes and exposes the patient to a legal suit. The pharmacist is also liable for compounding the prescriber’s mistake. The pharmacists should have an interest in the patient receiving the medications. It is fundamental to ask and confirm the demographic features of the patient, such as age before prescribing drugs. The patient and the patient’s family have not worked against any ethical or legal principle. Patients trust their physicians and take medications believing the physician to be accurate. They are not professionals. Therefore, the prescriber and the pharmacists are ethical and legally guilty of the wrong prescription.

Strategies to Address Disclosure and Nondisclosure

Medical practitioners recognize the occurrence of medical errors within the profession. The health institutions, states, and federal governments have established procedures to prevent medical errors and reporting and response channels. The state of Texas did not have an elaborate disclosure system until June 20, 2003, when the state government enacted into law legislation HB 1614 (Quality and patient safety, n.d). The enactment is unique to the needs of Texas despite having subtle similarities with other level legislations. The essential component of the law is the requirement that practitioners at the mental hospitals, hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers enter a detailed entry of medical errors.

The benefits of the strategy are its ability to increase surveillance on practitioners making frequent errors, and the intensity of the mistakes to take legal actions. It could be adopted to detect and punish practitioners responsible for rampant negligence and other mistakes. The strategy could also reveal quack practitioners who have entered the profession without prerequisite qualifications, under-training, or quasi practitioners. The health care sector needs to emphasize the recording of medical errors and the implementation of legal frameworks to deal with cases at the court levels and to underscore the seriousness with which medical errors are treated. The strategy would improve the practitioner’s attention and minimize deaths and other drug reactions detrimental to the patient’s health.

Strategies for Decision Making In This Scenario and Disclose of Error

The principles of integrity and honesty govern the response to the situation. The two principles determine how one relates to professional ethics and the codes of conduct. Therefore, using professional codes and professional ethics are the two key strategies to respond to the scenario. For instance, ethical principles such as Kantian deontology defines ethics or morality as action based on the rule of law regardless of the consequences to the actor and recipient of the work (Barrow  & Khandhar, 2019). In this case, state law requires reporting the scenario. I would file a report of the medical error per the ethical principles. The code of conduct defines how the doctor should relate to the patient. For instance, implementing the code of doing well under all circumstances, responding to the scenario would require entering a report and fast-tracking the child to ensure the threat is managed.

The Process of Writing Prescriptions

The practitioner and the pharmacist should consider the laboratory reports and consideration of the patient’s demographic features before prescribing drugs. Analyses of these variables inform the dosage and type of drug the prescriber gives to the patient. Also, there is a need for reexamining the prescription to ensure it meets the patient’s needs. The practitioner should accept faults in cases they lack knowledge or experience on the prescription. Doing so would limit drug errors resulting from ego.