Developing a prescribing role for acute care nurses

Abstract

Independent nurse prescribing can improve patient care, specifically patients' access to medicines, makes better use of nurses' skills and can improve clinical decision making. Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT), London, has 66 independent nurse prescribers working across its five hospital sites and plans are in place to train a further 30 non-medical prescribers each year. This article reviews the benefits and challenges of independent nurse prescribing and describes how ICHT supports its nurse prescribers.

Non‐medical prescribing by nurse practitioners in accident & emergency and sexual health: a comparative study

“…Sexual health did not have active PGD, therefore nurses not trained in INP were required to obtain a prescription from a third party, a likely explanation for the difference noted between the departments. This provides further support to the literature that nurses having access to medication increases the chance of them providing complete care packages (Stenner & Courtenay 2008, Jones 2009).…”

“…The INP benefits are widely expressed, including more timely access to medication, reduced waiting times, improved patient experience, better use of staff skills, autonomous practice, and career progression (Cooper et al 2008, Jones 2009). Quantifiable evidence to support these statements is, however, scarce and tends to originate from nurses' views rather than quantitative sources , Cooper et al 2008, Stenner & Courtenay 2008.…”

“…2008, Creedon et al. 2009, Jones 2009). Quantifiable evidence to support these statements is, however, scarce and tends to originate from nurses’ views rather than quantitative sources (Bradley & Nolan 2007, Cooper et al.…”

Nurse prescribing of medicines in Western European and Anglo-Saxon countries: a systematic review of the literature

“…The objective of creating quicker and more efficient patient access to medicines has also been highly influential in the introduction process of nurse prescribing internationally, especially within the UK and Ireland [21,25,26,29,31,32,34-37,39,42,46,47,51,52,55,58,61,62,64,67,69,76,82-84,87,89,90,94,100,102,104,106,112,114][116,120,128,132,135-137,140]. Another important force in this process has been the aim to make better use of nurses' skills and knowledge, and to improve the use of both health professionals' and patients' time [5,6,23,26,30,34,37,39,41,42,44,46,47,51,52,55,56,60,64,66-69,73-76,79,84,86,87,89,90,92,93,100,102,103,106,109][115-118,124,125,130,132-134,137]. Whereas these seem to have been the main drivers behind the introduction of nurse prescribing in the UK and Ireland, forces originating from within the health professions appear to have prevailed in other countries.…”

An audit of independent nurse prescribing in a critical care outreach team

“…This was further amended in 2010 to allow the prescribing of non‐licensed medication and mixed medicines (DOH, 2010). This has transformed nurse prescribing and opened up more opportunities for nurses in acute care settings (Jones, 2009; Goswell and Siefers, 2009).…”