Doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals are using modern technologies, which significantly assist them in their work. Electronic prescribing and telemedicine is coming in place of papers and hand-written notes for patients. It is a computer-based generation, processing, and filling of a medical prescription used by both hospitals and pharmacies (Ahmed, Jani, & Franklin, 2018). This approach has several valuable benefits as well as concerns about medical standards. This paper aims to summarize the advantages and disadvantages of electronic prescribing in view of the existing healthcare standards and assess how telemedicine affects them.
Electronic prescribing is a significant step forward in transparency in the health care system. This method of dealing with the allocation of medical products can ensure more exact decision-making. First, the doctor will carefully consider the medicine prescription, as some other professionals see his work and arrangement (Ahmed et al., 2018). This factor of ensuring the practice guidelines can prevent some mistakes in medical help, which in turn are highly unwanted and have detrimental consequences. Second, pharmacists will not be tempted to follow patients’ requests to sell them some complementary and cheaper drugs (Mills, Weidmann, & Stewart, 2017). It guarantees proper risk management, thus increasing the quality of patient care. Finally, both of these affect the sentinel event management by lowering the possibility of unexpected outcomes harmful to patients’ lives and health.
Furthermore, the method of electronic prescribing can have a vital impact on the staffing of medical institutions. Besides practice guidelines mentioned above, the nursing practice standards and patient care standards are improved by the possibility of instant help to the patients, considering the information available electronically (Ahmed et al., 2018). For instance, in the case of allergic patients who require immediate administration of the prescribed drug, there will be a lower chance of mistakes due to the nurse’s panic. All necessary information will be available and understandable, which is considerably better than hand-written notes being the reason for the wrong medicine applied. Hence, the hospital staff has to show their qualifications before being employed and maintain a high level of patient care within their working hours.
Telemedicine also might help to resolve several workplace issues. Over-prescribing is one of the topical problems in this area, and electronic prescribing is one of its solutions. This approach allows physicians to control the administrated drug and its amount in a single workflow (Mills et al., 2017). Moreover, some electronic alerts prevent duplication of the therapeutic measures and decrease the risk of adverse drug reactions. On the other hand, health care management may seek electronic prescribing as the tool for the pressure on doctors, nurses, and other professionals (Mills et al., 2017). This stress might cause a lack of value-based care as the professionals will be more concerned with the techniques and medical prescriptions rather than building effective communication with patients. As a result of neglect of the psychological compound of the treatment, the patients might have deterioration of their situations.
To conclude, electronic prescribing is a useful tool in the hands of medical practitioners that allows the beneficial way of health treatment and medicine administration. Telemedicine notably reduces all kinds of mechanical risks in health care management. It ensures adherence to the guidelines of patient care and hence provides a better understanding of the patient’s situation with the multiple factors available. However, electronic prescribing might reduce healthy human interactions vital for the well-being and positive outcome of the treated person.
References
Ahmed, Z., Jani, Y., & Franklin, B. D. (2018). A qualitative study exploring the phenomenon of multiple electronic prescribing systems within single hospital organizations. BMC Health Services Research, 18(969), 1-11.
Mills, P. R., Weidmann, A. E., & Stewart, D. (2017). Hospital electronic prescribing system implementation impact on discharge information communication and prescribing errors: a before and after study. European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 73, 1279-1286.