Medication Error | Nursing Assignment

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1NURSING
Introduction:
Medication error is a highly common preventable event that can lead to inappropriate
medication use or harm to patient. All the health care professionals have the responsibility to
protect patient from harm. Even if they engage in any medication errors, they have the
responsibility to immediately report about such errors. In addition, non-disclosure of medication
errors is regarded as a serious offence which has many ethical and legal implications (Ghazal,
Saleem & Amlani, 2014). This paper will look at a scenario related to non-disclosure of
prescription drug errors and evaluate the ethical and legal implications of such issues on different
stakeholders. The paper will also identify two strategies to mitigate the errors.
Overview of the scenario:
The scenario is such that as a nurse practitioner, I had to prescribe medications to a five
year old patient. However, I committed an error during prescribing medication as I gave him a
dose which was not appropriate considering his age. I gave him a dose which was suitable for
adults and I was in a dilemma whether to disclose about the issue to other staffs and the patient
family or not.
Ethical and legal implications of the scenario:
The above issue is likely to affect many individuals such as the patient, his family,
pharmacist and the prescriber. From the ethical perspective, the above scenario can immediately
affect patient as not taking urgent action can lead to medication overdose and toxicity which
could harm the life of the child. This in turn could affect the child’s family as they have the
ethical right to get clear and transparent information about care. Non-disclosure of error may
lead to ethical and legal conflict in the future as the family may seek an explanation or seek