Question

1.    Discuss legal and ethical issues related to administration of the wrong medication. Provide a rationale to support your response.

Answer 1

Administration of wrong medication comes under medication errors, which is a punishable offense under Medical Malpractice Law, and can result in irreversible severe injury or even death. This error can be caused at any point in a patient’s treatment due to an error in selection, error in prescription, or error during administration. This fatal error has both legal and ethical ramifications that could lead to a termination and legal action. The patient and/or family are entitled to compensation for this error, though this a negligible amount compared to the fatality that has occurred. Here the care provider is careless in following the rules and regulations hence it is right to face any legal action taken. Medication administration error is considered as medical negligence considering the elements of negligence such as duty, breach of duty of care, proximate cause, and damages. Any legal action would include compensation, accountability, and retribution. Ethics means doing the right act, which is applicable to healthcare using the four principles autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Medication administration error is a fatal error according to these four principles of healthcare ethics. It can be seen that in this case no respect is shown to the patients' autonomy or their right to make their own decisions. A medication administration error is just the opposite of beneficence or doing good to the patient under any circumstance. Nonmaleficence or 'first do no harm' policy is also not followed in this case. Justice has also not been followed.