Ethical and Legal Implications of Prescribing Drugs

Ethical and Legal Implications of the Scenario The ethical scenario under study is a nurse practitioner writing a prescription for her husband, who is not a patient of the nurse practitioner. The prescription is for a narcotic. The ethical dilemma, in this case, is whether to report the incident or not. The legal and ethical implications of this scenario do affect various stakeholders such as pharmacies, the family of the patient, physicians, and patients. To begin with, a nurse is not allowed to prescribe medication for a family member since her husband is not enrolled at the practice in which the nurse often diagnoses and treats patients (O’Donnell et al., 2017). The nurse is not also covered under the collaborative agreement with the physician for diagnosis of the patient, medical management, and prescribing. The pharmacist in this case has the legal obligation to report the matter to the state licensing board since the nurse has no legal authority to prescribe a controlled substance and other legend medications for self or family members. The risk involved in allowing a Nurse Practitioner to prescribe medication to the patient is based on the fact that it will lack objectivity. The legal implication follows after the Nurse Practitioner writes a prescription of a controlled substance or legend drug to her husband. If a pharmacist gets a prescription from a Nurse Practitioner for a controlled substance for a patient who is a family member and not the patient of the Nurse Practitioner, it is the duty of the pharmacist to report the matter to the lice...

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