Research Paper Example: Ethics and Pharmacy

Ethics refer to moral values that govern a person when undertaking a certain responsibility. Pharmacists are required to use their best medication by assisting the patients. There is much relationship between ethics, pharmacy and technology as ethics guides how pharmacists are supposed to carry out their activities. Almost all the responsibilities of the pharmacists as well the technology they use are based on ethics.

According to Knoer et al. (32), the pharmacist is to ensure that their respect with the patient is honored and caring is carried out in a confidential and passionate manner. The pharmacist has a moral obligation to maintain the gift of trust from the society he/she lives. In addition, the pharmacist has to maintain the dignity of the patient by showing the concern for the well-being of the patient. All the services given to the patient must be carried out in a private and diligent manner.

All patients have to be involved in decision-making and the pharmacists are supposed to carry out themselves in a professional and honest manner (Knoer et al., 32). Consequently, all the decisions to be made for the purposes of medications must be given to the patients in a way they understand. On the other hand, when the pharmacists are handling the patient, they must avoid discriminatory practices which may end up impairing their professional judgment.

When a pharmacist is handling the medical devices, they are supposed to be handled with professional competence for the better of the patient. According to Knoer et al. (32), the technology must be used accordingly to meet the individual, community and society needs. On the other hand, pharmacists must maintain fairness and equitability in terms of serving the patients with the existing technology.

Poor compliance of the patients due to adverse effects is becoming a major ethical issue to pharmacists. The patient starts to develop a negative attitude towards the medication and underestimates the effectiveness of the medication (Crnjanski et al., 9). On the other hand, noncompliance of the patient to the medication is caused by poor patient-healthcare provider relationship, health literacy and depth of patient knowledge. However, there exist two ways to deal with the issue ethically.

First, the pharmacist is supposed to hold a discussion with the patient about the importance of having a maintained medication. According to Das et al. (136), the pharmacist should also discuss with the patient to know the in-depth knowledge about the awareness of the patient regarding the complications that arise from their illness. Both discussions are recommended to be held in a private setting as a way to ensure that the pharmacist is attentive to the patient.

Another way to deal with the issue of patient non-compliance to the medication is to provide an alternative drug therapy which poses fewer side effects to the patient (Das et al., 136). This can be swiftly done by first contacting the patient-prescriber or consult other colleagues then propose to the patient-prescriber. All the consultations have to be carried out with respect and integrity.

Other ethical issues encountered by health system pharmacists include a shift of their roles from dispensing medications to actively being involved in patient care, limited resources and competing interests (Crnjanski et al., 15). The pharmacists can solve this by having their "own" decisions and actions. The pharmacist has to debunk that institutions are external to them since pharmacist can have a stake in institutional dynamics and ownership. In addition, the pharmacist needs to apply "emotional intelligence" to recognize the behavior pattern that may affect the patient negatively. Consequently, since the pharmacists are now being integrated into care team members, they need to come up with communities of trust where all the caregivers have to listen to one another and assert to core professional values.

Works Cited

Crnjanski, Tatjana, Dusanka Krajnovic, and Mirko Savic. "Pharmacists assessment of the difficulty and frequency of ethical issues encountered in community pharmacy settings." Science and Engineering Ethics (2017): 1-20.

Das, Kusal Kanti, et al. "Knowledge on ethical authorship: A comparative study between medical and pharmacy faculty." Journal of Young Pharmacists8.2 (2016): 136.

Knoer, Scott J., Allison R. Eck, and Amber J. Lucas. "A review of American pharmacy: education, training, technology, and practice." Journal of pharmaceutical health care and sciences 2.1 (2016): 32.