Over-medication results from patients using more drugs than those required to heal there particular diseases. According to research conducted by IMS Health in the year 2006 worldwide spending was estimated to be over six hundred billion dollars although there were reports suggesting that there was slow expansion in some parts of Europe and also North America. This phenomenon can be attributed to vigorous advertising campaigns that pharmaceuticals including those in the U.
S have been engaged in. Such adverts for example that appears in televisions and other form of media makes the consumers of drugs to purchase many drugs thus result to over-medication. Investigation shows that patient sensitivity of over-prescription may be significant in several approaches. For example, patients might be accurate on the suppositions that they make. Also patients using a lot of prescriptions might be less advocators of their remedial course of therapy.
Also patient’s feelings regarding the quantity of their prescription may echo the existence of unfavorable medical drug effects, comprising indications not acknowledged as connected to prescription by both the medical doctor and patient. It is also worth noting that it may be probable that patient sensitivity of over-prescription can be a demonstration of a condition known as psychoneurosis thus resulting to numerous health complications of patients Research also indicates that of late some Americans rely heavily on television commercials to purchase their drugs.
This implies that instead of seeking medication from the doctors or physicians they end up purchasing products that they have been advertised and on the process purchase over dose. Patients no longer seek doctor’s advice before they purchase the drugs but instead they buy those drugs that are commonly and frequently advertised. Research indicates that patient sensitivity of over-medication show a relationship with self-report of reduced conformity, unfavorable drug responses, and an rise in indication which is well-matched with unpredictable negative outcomes of prescription.
Therefore patients with such features deserve cautious assessment. Usually those patient reported to be involved in over-prescriptions of drugs are those who are suffering from long-term illnesses. There is a tendency for such patients to purchase drugs that they have seen in the pharmaceutical adverts aired in some form of media in order to try and see if such medicines are effective than those being administered by them by their medical doctors. (Caranasos, Stewart and Cluff, 1974) Ethical standards and doctor patient relationships
Both the doctor and the patient need each other especially when a view of pharmaceutical business is considered in that patients need drugs to heal certain ailments while pharmacists requires profit from his/her business. So if mutuality is missing both the parties may not succeed in their endeavors. Ethics is defined as the norms or standards of behavior that guide moral choices about the conduct of the personnel in any organization and in this case the conduct of the doctors in relation with their patients.
The goal of medical ethics is to ensure the safety of the patients is guaranteed to avoid suffering the consequences from the unscrupulous medical practices. The patient has right to know all information pertaining to the disease he/she is suffering from the doctor and this implies that doctors should the patients what exactly they are suffering from and fully explain to them in length the cause and treatment of such ailments. The patient also has the right to privacy; this implies that the doctor should treat the patient and he/she should not tell anyone except the patient or patient’s next of kin what the patient is suffering from.
This is set out in the doctor’s code of ethics which doctors must adhere to. The doctors also have the duty to prescribe correct drugs to the patient for the disease that the patient is suffering from. Patients can buy medicines that they have seen or heard in adverts to be effective but the drugs may not be effective in healing of particular ailments. Those with pharmaceuticals may not bother themselves explaining the need of alternative and required drugs because they are profit oriented but the doctors has to mind first the patient’s life and that of money to be second in order to safeguard the code of conduct set out by their regulations.
(Fuschs, 1996) Doctors need to know that patient privacy is supreme and there should be no medical data or recognizing information is conveyed to a third person with no articulate authorization of the patient. In order to guarantee that information is amassed and conveyed safely and carefully, certain hardware and scientific explanations that congregate worldwide principles have been put into practice. Such proceedings or reports are kept and interpret from innermost computer networks gifted with the utmost principles and values of physical and computerized information safekeeping.
Medical data of patients should not be delivered by electronic mail or kept on secondary computers that can be accessed by anyone. The patient has power to right of entry to data to view this medical documentation. Medical doctors should therefore comply with the requirements of other appropriate global privacy regulations. The huge majority of our moral preferences should be presenting in a simpler manner by adhering to the regulation presented by universal moral principles e. g.
individual and proficient standards, guidelines, or set of laws. Always with such alternatives the patients will have little worries and slight perplexity. However, it is also important to note that some options may be cumbersome to implement whereby such options may leave the patient to think if the doctors have been doing what they are supposed to do so. Doctors therefore ought to learn and be familiar with morally complicated alternatives in order to carry out their duties effectively.
There exist many morally complicated options that arise frequently and doctors should be aware on how to deal with such options. (IMS Health, 2006) Medical doctors are ethically compelled to select among many contradictory plan of action and only the best strategy should be selected, e. g. a doctor should either decide to offer a medically designated treatment or value the customer in this context the patient views on using the prescribed drugs that is the doctor should prescribe drugs without the influence of the patient himself/herself.