In the world today, nurse practitioners are amongst the most trusted professionals. Therefore, nurse practitioners need to maintain both ethical and legal standards in their line of duty to ensure safety while treating and prescribing drugs to patients. Besides, the nurse practitioners have the prescriptive authority over controlled substances and medications and therefore need to ensure that they give the right and accurate medicines to their patients. In scenario two, the issue of prescribing medicines to patients with family and relationship ties might have various legal and ethic implications both to the nurse practitioner, the patient and to the patient’s family. According to the ethical prescribing standards of nurses, prescribing drugs to close friends might have ethical implications since the close ties clouds the judgment of the prescriber. Therefore, prescribing to a patient without a collaborative relationship could attract legal action against the prescriber. Besides, the drugs might have adverse effects on the patient and in some instances might even lead to death. In such cases, the nurse might face murders charges. The patient’s family members might be faulted for not ensuring that the patient had proper treatment. However, the suffering or loss of a loved one might lead to emotional torture to the close family member of the patient.
Since the safety of the patient comes first, it is always paramount that prescription errors be reported to avoid future occurrence. Therefore, in scenario 2, I would report to the medical authority and notify them of the prescriptive error that occurred. This will enable them to make a follow up on the patient’s prescription and make a judgment on whether the prescription was the right one. Another strategy could be making a follow up on the patient’s medical history and ask the patient to visit the medical facility for further analysis and help determine the ailment the patient is suffering from. This will enable me to decide on the right prescription to treat the conditions and even rectify the prescription if need be.
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