Prescription Management

Posted by nurse on September 28, 2011 under Critical Care, patient health | Be the First to Comment

Nurses study the processes and techniques of medical treatment of the body, but some of the biggest challenges in a nursing job or nursing occupation over a career lifetime span are dealing with patient trends and responses to physical behavior. The patient undergoes many situations which change their attitude to the medical process as a whole and their place in it. Anger, frustration, pain, ignorance, habit, and even religion and cultural attitudes may change what the patient is willing to do under doctor’s orders.

Patient interaction with the medical system is one of many dynamics studied by occupational nurses and nursing science researchers. One of the most important dynamics of these is the concordance to physician orders and medical advice by the patience. But the system goes through countless documentation, clinical sessions, direct medication advice, treatment care plan repetition, and verbal reminding of exactly the same pharmaceutical cautions and instructions given by the doctor. This should result in a faithful concordance to doctor’s orders.

But the pharmaceutical sciences are rife with abuse. Patients try to alter or extend prescriptions. Even when they don’t need additional medication they may want it. They may try to obtain additional medication or stronger dosages to achieve an average for resale to others online or on the street. On the lighter side, some patients merely forget the intended dosages or make a change once and unwittingly change their medication habits against doctor’s orders by accident.

Why do patients act or react against their own self interest when their health is at stake? What makes a patient who knows they haven’t gone to medical school decide they know best concerning a given pharmaceutical substance or medication? Nurses strive in vain to understand the willful ignorance or slight attention paid to circumstances serious enough to warrant pharmaceutical intervention with the body, but not attention to the law. It is against the law to take medication not intended for you or to give medication to others it was not prescribed for.

Nurses, doctors and physicians must observe and report irregularities about patient use of medications at once. There are standard and practices that underscore this need for medication vigilance. The doctors and medical staff must responsibly monitor medications among all their other duties, but the public may often misunderstand why nurses, doctor’s patients and medical staff are evaluating the patient on an ongoing basis. The incarnation of the watchful, evil nurse who sees all evil is a comic but altogether inexact one.

The laws concerning patient practice and pharmaceutical medications for nurses to give to patients have been through several decades of streamlining and change. The process by which papers and documentation goes through to the patient from a hospital, clinic, dispensary and/or nursing facility is conducted after thorough overviews and training. Entire wards and surgery staffs must be on the same page regarding the flow of information, medication, approval and dispensation of medications to patients. These are safeguards for the public good.

The patient population as a whole can be counted on for a good faith follow up to doctors advice and medical consultation results. But medications, prescription alteration, medication abuse, and suspected suppression of treatment via pharmaceutical interaction must be monitored on a daily basis, sometimes hourly in some cases. patients may hear contrary advice from friend relatives, and other patients and change their use of the treatment accordingly, without the doctor’s knowledge.

Physicians may check up on patients to make sure they are not mixing up their current treatment plan and care with a previous systems or pharmaceutical therapy schedule. Since similar medication and painkiller,s topical antibiotics and medications in differing combinations would be use to treat any given ailment it is not surprising that long term care patients of any ailment may elect to become a “higher authority” on what the medications can do for them. But absent from these “independent” decisions by the patient regarding their medications.

Pharmaceutical therapy is only part of a balanced diet and exercise, rest and mobility that physicians have in mind when they admit or discharge a patient. Surgical intervention and other processes or procedures applied to the body set up the scenario for pharmaceutical follow-up. Drug taking can affect the way a patient sees the medical process and they can feel they are taking stand for themselves asserting an independence over the control of medical substances ingested.

Patients may become so familiar with their medications and with the running of a long term course of treatment they may unwittingly alter their completion of a physician’s instructions.
The dosage of the medication of a patient must be of concern to their nurses at all times. Do sufficient dosages exist of each medication and are they readily available at the proper time? Querying patients can determine their level of awareness of what drugs they are taking and when.

Typically patients may receive the initial notification of a pill medication from their physician but they may not realize that they want to change it or make changes later when the bulk of the problem may be over, in their own estimation. Their state of mind and medical condition may change such that they are no longer able to recall the exact information. They my reach in the dark, fuzzy and sleepy, or excited and in pain, for the wrong medication in the wrong amount.

One patient may independently decide the benefit of a medication has run its course, without the benefit of a doctor’ input a nurse advise or consultation. The patient may need money and want to change their dosage to make up for another one they will sell or trade for goods, cash or other drugs. relatives may steal their drugs or they may accidentally pour them down the sink or spill them. And a very small rate of patients will report low or null absorption due to extremely rare factors such as mineral presences, menstrual activity, or neural chemicals interfering with drug adhesion.

As a solution, physicians will order specimen testing to ensure patient concordance to prescription advice. Verbal counseling and reminder follow ups, and well as constant checking of available medications and the condition of these medications and their quantities, can be very impactful, especially for outpatients. Blood tests and urine tests will reflect this and should be collected and reported to the patient’s file as accurately as possible.

The reasons why a patient may change their use of a medication are varied. But a nurse or physician, attending nurse or technician must report and consult with a physician for any patient suspected of altering or changing their intake of prescription medication for any reason. Regardless of the rational employed by the patient for such a change, patient fidelity to pharmaceutical therapy plans must be safeguarded as much as possible.