Pharmacy Law and Ethics: Evaluating Pharmacist Independent Prescribing

This essay provides an analysis of pharmacy law and ethics, particularly focusing on the evolving role of pharmacists in independently prescribing medication. It summarizes the key points of the article “Is this the beginning of the end for supplementary prescribing?” which discusses the legislative changes allowing pharmacists to prescribe licensed medication without a clinical management plan. The essay delves into the advantages and disadvantages of this shift, considering aspects such as enhanced pharmacist competence, patient accessibility, and potential risks to patient safety. It also emphasizes the importance of ethical considerations and the need for pharmacists to exercise responsibility and accountability in their prescribing practices, ultimately advocating for the use of sound clinical judgment to ensure optimal patient health outcomes. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and resources for students.

Running head: PHARMACY LAW ETHICS
Pharmacy law ethics
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Introduction:
The pharmaceutical industry is expanding and improving every day with the new
advancements brought forth in the medical science (Cope, Abuzour & Tully, 2016). It has to
be mentioned in this context, that the pharmaceutical laws and legislations are being changed
every day in order to ensure that the patients are not at risk for any medicinal errors that has
the potential to affect their health and wellbeing. A novel concept in the British
pharmaceutical industry is the right that has been given to the pharmacists that can now
independently prescribe licensed medication to the patients (Franklin, 2017). This essay will
summarize the key points of the article “Is this the beginning of the end for supplementary
prescribing?” and provide personal opinion regarding the concept with respect to the existing
pharmacy ethics and legislations.
Summary of the article:
The article chosen for the assignment is the “Is this the beginning of the end for
supplementary prescribing?” that has been published in the Pharmaceutical journal on 30th of
June, 2006 (Pharmaceutical-journal.com, 2018). The article emphasizes on a very important
aspect of the present day medicine, the right for the pharmacists to independently prescribe
licensed medication to the patients in need. As per the new legislative directives that has been
published in the year of 2006, the pharmacists now had the right to prescribe only licensed
medication without any clinical management plan to the patients, which has been a
revolutionary movement marking the end of the period of supplementary medication in the
market. Supplementary prescribing can be defined as the process where the non-medical
professionals can prescribe medications to the patients after the doctor or medical practitioner
has already made a diagnosis for the patient and the condition that the patient is suffering
from (Paterson et al., 2014). Although, supplementary medication process involved the

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doctor to diagnose the condition of the patient and complete a thorough and complete clinical
management plan for the patient before going forward with prescribing the medication.
The article has emphasized on the fact that supplementary medication procedure still
had certain means of control on the prescription of the medication and provided some real
benefits to the patients. It has to be mentioned in this context that the supplementary
medication still required the need for the patients to be involved more in their care and with
enhanced compliance and concordance (Paul et al., 2014). This procedure helped the patient
improve their understanding of care that they will themselves receive. The article also
discussed another positive aspect of supplementary prescribing, entailing that the pharmacists
can gain better confidence and competence by learning to prescribe medication. The article
has also mentioned that supplementary prescribing will only remain useful for the patients
with complicated conditions which will in turn facilitate staff training (Pharmaceutical-
journal.com, 2018).
On the other hand, the article mentions that the advice of the joint prescribing adviser
at the Royal College of Nursing has stated that the non-medical prescribing undoubtedly
enhanced the care scope for many patients that cannot access or reach the facility due to
certain complications. Although, even though the controlled drugs are not included in the list
of medication, the concern for medication safety is still paramount. A very important concern
that has been reported as a practice hazard has been the patients asking for urgent
prescriptions, even for some surgery cases. In most cases, these urgent prescriptions are very
critical and involve ethical and moral dilemma in decision making which often creates ethical
and professional issues for the pharmacists in practice (Franklin, 2017). The advice by Mr.
Griffith as mentioned in the article suggests that the pharmacists must stop prescribing certain
medication in case they are not comfortable with prescribing them even if the patients are
pressurizing for the medication. As rationale to this contradictory suggestion, Mr Griffith in

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the article mentioned there is a pressing need for the pharmacists to build up their confidence
and competence to independently prescribe medication slowly so that the patient safety is not
affected and safe practice requirements are followed in accordance with the various ethical
and professional codes and conducts of practice in pharmacy (Pharmaceutical-journal.com,
2018).
Article Opinion
The legal modifications positively supporting the allowance for pharmacists
prescribing patient medication products, has paved the way for the consideration of several
beneficial advantages concerning the future pharmaceutical activities, with however, keeping
in mind certain ethical considerations associate with patient safety and health (Yang et al.,
2015). Upon referring to the selected article, I believe that such an amendment will bring
forward its own share of advantages and disadvantages.
Considering the beneficial implications, I feel that such a change will enhance the
confidence and the competency levels exhibited by newly enrolled pharmacists, who are
novel to the field of drug handling, storage and prescription. Upon gaining possession of the
right to prescribe appropriate drugs, the newly practicing pharmacists will be compelled to
undertake adequate research concerning the salient details of storage, mechanism of action
and disease specification of each drug, resulting in enhancement of knowledge (Delience et
al., 2016). Further, with the advent of technology and science, individuals are gradually
opting to gain control over their lives, due to the increased accessibility and exposure to a
vast array of information. Hence, considering the presence of such lifestyle amendments,
individuals are gradually opting for self-diagnostic procedures associated with disease
management, medication administration and treatment procedures. Hence, I believe granting
legal permission to pharmacists for drug prescription; will lead to beneficial advantages as

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this grants easy accessibility to patients practicing self-diagnosis, without the eagerness to
adhere to institutionalized medication procedures. Hence, considering the assumed positive
response from patients engaged in self-diagnosis, this will further result in enhancing the
confidence of the new pharmacist during drug suggestion practices (Ahmad et al., 2014).
However, despite the beneficial consequences, I believe that there still lies
considerable shortcomings and disadvantages concerning the practice of pharmacist
legalization of drug prescription. It is worthwhile to mention that this legislative act also
allows pharmacist to hand over medications and drugs, which are devoid of licensing. Hence,
further ethical and legal considerations have to be considered for this amendment in order to
ensure patient safety and healthcare. Further, the prescription of drugs requires sufficient
research and information, and hence, prescription by an individual lacking considerable
expertise and data may lead to serious negative health complications in the concerned
patients (Pevnick et al., 2016). Hence, I believe that the need of the hour is to welcome this
legal change, however, with careful consideration of future implications. Pharmacists who
will now engage in prescription of drugs to the concerned patients, must remember that the
novelty of this newly acquired ability, will require an increased sense of responsibility and
accountability. With the allowance to legally prescribe drugs to unsuspecting patient,
pharmacists must remember that amidst the occurrences of medication errors and the
resultant patient health implications, they will now be greatly accountable and questioned,
hence keeping their occupation at a greater risk. Hence, I believe that for successful
utilization of this newly acquired responsibility, pharmacists must critically examine their
decisions. I believe that is advisable for pharmacists to further abstain from prescribe a drug,
for which they feel discomfort, doubt or lack of awareness even at the slightest level (van Mil
et al., 2016).

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Conclusion:
On a concluding note, the future health of the community, population and world, lie at
the hands of medical professionals. Hence, before the exercise of any duty, medical
professionals in general and pharmacists in particular, must consider usage of ethical and
sound clinical practices, which will result in the optimum deliverance of beneficial health and
treatment outcomes for concerned patients.

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References:
Ahmad, A., Patel, I., Mohanta, G. P., & Balkrishnan, R. (2014). Evaluation of self medication
practices in rural area of town Sahaswan at Northern India. Annals of medical and
health sciences research, 4(8), 73-78.
Baqir, W., Crehan, O., Murray, R., Campbell, D., & Copeland, R. (2015). Pharmacist
prescribing within a UK NHS hospital trust: nature and extent of prescribing, and
prevalence of errors. Eur J Hosp Pharm, 22(2), 79-82.
Cope, L. C., Abuzour, A. S., & Tully, M. P. (2016). Nonmedical prescribing: where are we
now?. Therapeutic advances in drug safety, 7(4), 165-172.
Deliens, C., Deliens, G., Filleul, O., Pepersack, T., Awada, A., Piccart, M., ... & Dal Lago, L.
(2016). Drugs prescribed for patients hospitalized in a geriatric oncology unit:
potentially inappropriate medications and impact of a clinical pharmacist. Journal of
geriatric oncology, 7(6), 463-470.
Franklin, P. M. (Ed.). (2017). Non-medical Prescribing in the United Kingdom. Springer.
Paterson, R. E., Redman, S. G., Unwin, R., McElhinney, E., Macphee, M., & Downer, F.
(2016). Non-medical prescribing assessment–An evaluation of a nationally agreed
multi method approach. Nurse education in practice, 16(1), 280-286.
Paul, B., Cooper, R., Guillaume, L., Anderson, C., Avery, A., Hutchinson, A., ... & Ward, P.
(2014). An Evaluation of Supplementary Prescribing in Nursing and Pharmacy. Final
report of Department of Health, The University of Shefield, eprint@ whiterose. ac.
uk. Accessed on the 19th June.
Pevnick, J. M., Palmer, K. A., Shane, R., Wu, C. N., Bell, D. S., Diaz, F., ... & Jackevicius,
C. A. (2016). Potential benefit of electronic pharmacy claims data to prevent

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medication history errors and resultant inpatient order errors. Journal of the American
Medical Informatics Association, 23(5), 942-950.
Pharmaceutical-journal.com, (2018). Is this the beginning of the end for supplementary
prescribing?. [Online]. Retrieved from
https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/is-this-the-beginning-of-
the-end-for-supplementary-prescribing/10006689.article?firstPass=false [Accessed on
29th Oct]
van Mil, J. F., Westerlund, T., Brown, L., Chen, T. F., Henman, M., Hersberger, K., ... &
Schulz, M. (2016). Medical care and drug-related problems: Do doctors and
pharmacists speak the same language?. International journal of clinical
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Yang, Z., Wilsey, B., Bohm, M., Weyrich, M., Roy, K., Ritley, D., ... & Melnikow, J. (2015).
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