Respond THE PROVIDED POSTin one or more of the following ways:
Suggest additional ethical and legal implications for all stakeholders in your colleagues’ scenarios.
Offer and support an alternative perspective using readings from the classroom or from your own research.
Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research.
As a nurse practitioner, you prescribe medications for your patients. You make an error when prescribing medication to a 5-year-old patient. Rather than dosing him appropriately, you prescribe a dose suitable for an adult.
When prescribing a medication for special population such as children, it is the responsibility of the Nurse Practitioner to ensure the correct dosage is written (Arcangelo, et al., 2017). These medications and dosages should be double checked by the pharmacist, but the ultimate responsibility falls on the prescriber. Writing an adult dose of medication for a 5-year-old child could be a fatal mistake. As transparency laws and policies become more prevalent the Nurse Practitioner needs to be as well (Ladd, & Hoyt, 2016).
In prescribing the incorrect dosage of a medication the Nurse Practitioner has increased the chances of the patient having a reaction or even a fatal dose. The nurse can lose her license and be sued for prescribing a harmful medication or dose to a child. The prescriber has the potential for losing medication privileges, or license, as well as being sued. The pharmacist faces the same difficulties as they are the 2nd line in verifying the correct medications are ordered. The child could die from the medication, and the family needs to be aware of what signs and symptoms they are to be aware of.
When making a medication error the most important thing is to correct it immediately to ensure the safety of the patient. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA) action must be taken swiftly to correct the mistake and report the error, no nurse rather on their own or by observing a coworker may cover up or remain quiet about a medication error (American Nurses Association (n.d.). The Nurse Practitioner needs to follow both her ethical and legal obligations to the patient as well as the policies and procedures in handling a medication error as set forth by the facility she is employed with.
Reference
Arcangelo, V. P., Peterson, A. M., Wilbur, V., & Reinhold, J. A. (Eds.). (2017). Pharmacotherapeutics for advanced practice: A practical approach (4th ed.). Ambler, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Ladd, E., & Hoyt, A. (2016). Shedding Light on Nurse Practitioner Prescribing. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 12(3), 166–173. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2015.09.017
American Nurses association. (n.d.). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. Nursing World. Retrieved from: https://www.nursingworld.org/news/news-releases/2019-news-releases/ana-responds-to-vanderbilt-nurse-incident/
Sample Solution
