Role of Health Professionals Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

ROLE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
Name
Course
Date
Introduction
Health professionals are those people who evaluate, examine, diagnose, treat, and prevent people’s ailments, lacerations, and other physical and mental disabilities according to the needs of the patients they serve. Health professionals are also public health and community health practitioners. Examples of health professionals include physicians, surgeons, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, nurses, or pharmacists. These health professionals help in improving the quality of health care. Each of the mentioned and other health professionals has his/her duties and responsibilities towards health improvement and recovery of a particular patient from a certain ailment or illness.
Role of Pharmacists towards a Patient
Pharmacists have their specified duties and responsibilities towards the recovery of a particular patient. These duties and responsibilities include giving out and dispensing prescriptions on the use of a particular medicine. This is because they are specialists in this field and they help in reducing medication errors. Medication errors have been one of the leading causes of death in the United States. It has been recorded to have caused around 251,000 deaths in the United States in 2017 (Anderson and Abrahamson, 2017). Also, pharmacists are involved in providing counsel to the patients. This is concerned with providing information about the dangers of taking some foods and beverages under particular medications. Pharmacists also educate and train patients on how and when to take the doses of medicine prescribed.
Pharmacists do a follow up on the patients to check whether the prescribed medications are working. Research that was done concluded that following up on patients led to the improvement of the quality of health care and enhanced the possibilities of quick recovery (Schroeder, 2016). Pharmacists also share ways and methods of reducing the side effects of taking a particular medicine. This may include taking a lower dose, adding another medicine, or even administering a different drug (Macmillan, 2015). Last, pharmacists should listen to their patient’s suggestions, complains, and concerns. This helps in achieving patient satisfaction during treatment. Therefore, it is good for the pharmacist to have good communication skills to achieve this responsibility and hence improving the quality of treatment. Pharmacists listening to their patients also improves the patient’s medicine adherence (Anna and Arnet, 2018).
The Medicine Shoppe v. Loretta Lynch, et al. Case
In 2011, an inspection was conducted on a Medicine Shoppe, a small family-owned pharmacy in San Antonio, Texas, by the Dmg Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA found prescriptions filled by patients of a local physician who was being investigated for allegedly Dmg diversion. Dmg diversion refers to illegal channelling of regulated drugs from legal sources to the market (HeinOnline, 2016). In 2013, the deputy administrator of DEA issued an Order To Show Cause claiming that the Medicine Shoppe was filling prescriptions written by the local physician that was not for a legitimate medical purpose. The DEA alleged that the Medicine Shoppe’s pharmacists did not e...