Health Care Drugs There Are Many Ethical

Health Care Drugs

There are many ethical and moral decisions to be made with drugs are available in health care facility. As department manager, a set of procedures and protocols regarding the handling, storing and monitoring of drugs is necessary to ensure the safety of the patients and employees. Within this set of procedures, generic drugs, controlled drugs, and all charting is necessary so that all drugs can be documented in order to keep track of everything and to keep all employees honest (Pamela Anderson, 2010). This is because no medicine is without side effects and some are worse than others."In any situation where care-workers are responsible for the looking after and giving of medicines to other people, be they young or old, healthy or sick, it is important to follow a set of general principles to ensure that this is done safely. In some ways this is similar to the way in which we follow a set of principles or rules in connection with the use of electricity -- for example, not fitting electricity sockets in bathrooms and not handling electrical equipment with wet hands (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care). As department manager, I have to apply the policies to Deanna, an employee who takes anti-inflammatory drugs for her personal use so that she will not hurt the patients and herself at any point.

Medicine records are very important in any health care facility. This is because if the staff handles the medicine for the people that they care for, they should be able to identify the medicines for each person and how much they have left through a charting system. Even when staff do not give medicines, it is important to know (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• Whether the person has any medicines (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• What the medicines are and how they should be taken (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care)

• What conditions the medicines are intended to treat (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

Controlled drugs are prescribed and dispensed for individually named people. There are legal requirements for CD prescriptions. Therefore, a prescription that does not comply with these requirements may have to be sent back. A second trained member of staff witnesses this process. Controlled drugs have to be stocked in order to be ordered if the organization has obtained a Home Office License. A separate record of the receipt needs to be kept for administration and disposal of the controlled drugs (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care). Therefore, the following should be followed in order to record drug administration properly for all drugs in the health care facility.

• Administration should be recorded both on the MAR and in the record book (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• These records must be kept in a bound book with numbered pages (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• There should be a separate page for each drug for each person (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• Include the balance remaining for each product. This should be checked against the amount in the pack or bottle at each administration and also on a regular basis (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

In order to give a medicine safely, all employees must:

• Identify the medicines correctly. To do so, the medicine pack must have a label attached by the pharmacist (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• Identify the person correctly (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• Know what the medicine is intended to do, for example, to help the person breathe more easily (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

• Know whether to give the medicine with food (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care).

From there, storage of medicine should be kept locked up and only allow nurses to get them ready for the patients no matter what kind of drug it is. All employees must have medicine training in order adminstrure the drugs and they must know the following:

• Into the mouth (tablets, capsules, liquids)

• Ear, nose and eye drops

• Inhalers

• Medicines applied to the skin.

As the department mananager, by law, there has to be a formal assessment on completion in order to be sure all employees can confidently and correctly give medicines prescribed for the patients. For now on, I will do this by accompanying all employees when they give medicines and observing that they do key important tasks linked to the care service policy and procedures (The Handling of Medicine in Social Care). All employees must do the following when there is edicines administration: