Ethics in psychiatry

Wow well Psych turned out to get a bit busier towards the end than I had anticipated. I ended up completing all 4 case sin the final week, and had to adapt one of them to fit the demands of the Uni ethics case.

However, like many others I worry that I have done the ethics case wrong. The guidance notes seemed to refer to patient safety stuff and us seeing staff doing things wrong and how this could affect the patients prognosis and outcome.

Mine focuses more on the issues to do with a 17yr old with prodromal posychoses and self-harm but who contninues to abuse large quantities of illicit drugs, and for whom pharmacotherpay is bcoming elss effective as he takes more drugs to achieve the high he wanted.

I linked this to teh situation of heart disease, and the fact that medics and GPS continue to give statins and anti-hypertensives een though people continue to eat badly, exercise poorly, and drink and smoke mroe. Thus I reasoned the illicit drugs were only different ebcause they were illegal, but that such isuses shuould not affect patient care.

However from the otehr side, if the pharmaco-therapy is meaning that the patient is taking more illicit drugs (with no quality control sapling etc) then it puts him at greater risk of adverse side effects and making his psychiatric condition worse, so maybe in the interest of non-malifience we should cut back his treatment.

In the end I came to no clear view........but in my experience psychiatry was all about discussing the options and not coming to a decision......