Ethics Case Study

Ethics case study

In today’s healthcare industry, dealing with last minute requests is a difficult thing. With all the laws and regulations for each specific career and what you can and cannot do without the presence of a physician is difficult to assess without a previous experience or acknowledgement. When it comes to patients requests, you want to know what you are doing will not get you or the physician you work for into trouble. In Jerry’s case I will discuss how I would assess the situation, give jerry advice, and address future methods of how Jerry could handle these types of situations.

With the facts on hand that Jerry is a certified license practical nurse (LPN) and a certified medical assistant I can easily assess that Jerry has no qualifications to write the patient who is requesting medication at such a short notice with the medication. He has not been given permission by the patients’ physician and does not know the ins and outs of the patient and physicians relationship. Jerry should inform the patient that they would need to call back after the time the physician would be back and have the physician call in the prescription to a location near them. Even if Jerry had the authority to call the medication in, the medication would not be ready in time for the patient to pick up and be on their flight. If the medication was not a narcotic it still would not be ok for Jerry to call in because as stated he has no authority to do so. If the medication was needed for life or death situations many emergency rooms will supply a patient with enough medication to cover the days you need in order to get with your physician to get a refill.

If by some chance Jerry did go ahead and give the patient a refill order, he would not be covered by the doctrine of respondent superior because this act is not within his job reasonable job tasks or even skill. Granted, he is there by himself and is acting as the receptionist but even at this...