NURS6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

NURS6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs NURS6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs What type of drug should you prescribe based on your patient’s diagnosis? How much of the drug should the patient receive? How often should the drug be administered? When should the drug not be prescribed? Are there individual patient factors that could create complications when taking the drug? Should you be prescribing drugs to this patient? How might different state regulations affect the prescribing of this drug to this patient? NURS6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED AND ORIGINAL NURSING PAPERS These are some of the questions you might consider when selecting a treatment plan for a patient. Photo Credit: Getty Images/Caiaimage As an advanced practice nurse prescribing drugs, you are held accountable for people’s lives every day. Patients and their families will often place trust in you because of your position. With this trust comes power and responsibility, as well as an ethical and legal obligation to “do no harm.” It is important that you are aware of current professional, legal, and ethical standards for advanced practice nurses with prescriptive authority. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the treatment plans and administration/prescribing of drugs is in accordance with the regulations of the state in which you practice. Understanding how these regulations may affect the prescribing of certain drugs in different states may have a significant impact on your patient’s treatment plan. In this Assignment, you explore ethical and legal implications of scenarios and consider how to appropriately respond. To Prepare Review the Resources for this module and consider the legal and ethical implications of prescribing prescription drugs, disclosure, and nondisclosure. Review the scenario assigned by your Instructor for this Assignment. Search specific laws and standards for prescribing prescription drugs and for addressing medication errors for your state or region, and reflect on these as you review the scenario assigned by your Instructor. Consider the ethical and legal implications of the scenario for all stakeholders involved, such as the prescriber, pharmacist, patient, and patient’s family. Think about two strategies that you, as an advanced practice nurse, would use to guide your ethically and legally responsible decision-making in this scenario, including whether you would disclose any medication errors. By Day 7 of Week 1 Write a 2- to 3-page paper that addresses the following: Explain the ethical and legal implications of the scenario you selected on all stakeholders involved, such as the prescriber, pharmacist, patient, and patient’s family. Describe strategies to address disclosure and nondisclosure as identified in the scenario you selected. Be sure to reference laws specific to your state. Explain two strategies that you, as an advanced practice nurse, would use to guide your decision making in this scenario, including whether you would disclose your error. Be sure to justify your explanation. Explain the process of writing prescriptions, including strategies to minimize medication errors. Reminder: The College of Nursing requires that all papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and references. The College of Nursing Writing Template with Instructions provided at the Walden Writing Center offers an example of those required elements (available at https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/templates/general#s-lg-box-20293632 ). All papers submitted must use this formatting. Submission and Grading Information To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following: Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK1Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name. Click the Week 1 Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment. Click the Week 1 Assignment link. You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area. Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer button. Find the document you saved as “WK1Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open . If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database . Click on the Submit button to complete your submission. Grading Criteria To access your rubric: Week 1 Assignment Rubric Check Your Assignment Draft for Authenticity To check your Assignment draft for authenticity: Submit your Week 1 Assignment draft and review the originality report. Submit Your Assignment by Day 7 of Week 1 To participate in this Assignment: Week 1 Assignment NURS6521 Week 1 Assignment: Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs See Below for Sample Week 1 Discussion and What to Expect on this Assignment. Module 1 Discussion Post – Ambien and the Elderly COLLAPSE I recently worked on a Medical Surgical unit of a local community hospital. At this position I often worked the 3pm-11pm shift. Part of my duties for this shift was to administer my patients their evening medications. These were usually given between 9pm and 10pm. One evening in particular, I was caring for an elderly woman (84 years old) who had reported having difficulty sleeping during previous nights. As a result, she had PRN orders in her chart for Ambien to help her sleep. The dose of Ambien to be given was 5mg, by mouth, once each evening if she was having trouble sleeping. When I asked her how she was feeling, and if she needed anything else that evening she stated that she would like to have her sleep medicine. I gave her the sleep aid with her evening medications, made sure everyone had everything they needed, reported off to the next nurse, and I left for the night. Upon return to work the next day, again for the 3-11 shift, the day nurse pulled me aside and asked that if I am to leave at 11:00 to please not give Ambien to my elderly patients. Shortly after I had left the evening before, the overnight nurse after me found my patient heading toward the stairwell with her gown off and wrapped around her IV pole. The patient was confused and hallucinating. The pharmacokinetics of Ambien are described as a rapid absorption from the gastrointestinal tract and a short elimination half-life in healthy subjects (Sanofi, 2008). It is stated that the half-life is increased by 50% in patients over the age of 70 (Sanofi, 2008). The pharmacodynamics of Ambien are that it is a CNS depressant and causes a sedative-hypnotic state which induces sleep (Sanofi, 2008). In this case above, the patients age played an important role in the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the Ambien. Even with a decreased dose of 5 mg versus the usual 10 mg it was still too much for her. Ambien comes with many side effects, all of which involve close and frequent monitoring of the patient receiving it (Kajiwara, Yamamura, Murase, Koda, Hirota, Ishizuka, Morita, Oniki, Sarawatari & Nakagawa, 2016). In the care plan for this patient I would include many interventions to provide closer and more frequent monitoring of side effects. This care plan would include more careful dosing, or switching to a milder sleep aid for this particular patient (Lopez-Sepulveda, Lirola, Garcia, Sances, Ordonez, Martinez &Barrera, 2017). If there was not another option for her, I would also include having the patient wear a bed alarm and keeping her close to the nurses station. In my plan of care, I would also honor the next nurses wishes and refrain from giving this medication before shift change. This medication could be given a little bit later in the evening when it is more feasible to provide closer monitoring of this patient. References: Kajiwara, A., Yamamura, M., Murase, M., Koda, H., Hirota, S., Ishizuka, T., Morita, K., Oniki, K., Saruwatari, J., & Nakagawa, K. (2016). Safety analysis of zolpidem in elderly subjects 80 years of age or older: adverse event monitoring in Japanese subjects. Aging & Mental Health, 20(6), 611–615. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1080/13607863.2015.1031640. López-Sepúlveda, R., García Lirola, M., Espínola García, E., Martín Sances, S., Anaya Ordóñez, S., Jurado Martínez, J., & Cabeza Barrera, J. (2017). Effects of a primary care intervention to improve the quality of zolpidem prescriptions in elderly patients. European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 73(4), 455–461. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1007/s00228-016-2180-4. Sanofi Aventis. Highlights of prescribing information Ambien. (2008, February). Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2008/019908s027lbl.pdf Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100 Use the following coupon code : NURSING10