Pharmacy Ethics
Pharmacy Ethics tests professional judgment when obligations conflict: patient welfare, autonomy, confidentiality, legal duty, and fairness. Questions often ask what the pharmacist should do first or how to document a decision.
Core rules
- Four principles: beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. Autonomy supports informed consent and refusal; nonmaleficence supports error prevention.
- Confidentiality has limits: serious harm, legal reporting, and authorized disclosure. Share only the minimum necessary.
- Conflicts of interest must be disclosed and managed; gifts from industry should not influence formulary or prescribing decisions.
- Research ethics require IRB review, voluntary consent, risk minimization, privacy, and honest reporting.
Worked example
A prescription is written for a tenfold overdose. Reasoning: the pharmacist should not dispense silently or simply refuse. Contact the prescriber, clarify the intended dose, document the interaction, and counsel the patient. If the prescriber insists on an unsafe order, follow legal and professional reporting channels. Patient safety takes priority, but autonomy and confidentiality still apply.
Traps
Equating legality with ethics; breaching confidentiality without justification; letting hierarchy suppress an error report; failing to document an intervention.