The views of non-medical prescribing students and medical mentors on interprofessional competency assessment – A qualitative exploration

Barriers and facilitators to implementation of non-medical independent prescribing in primary care in the UK: a qualitative systematic review

“…Studies described a highly qualified, specialist nursing and pharmacy workforce delivering unscheduled, scheduled and out-of-hours services 130 132–137 139 140 142 144 146 148–150 who routinely made autonomous clinical decisions necessitating prescribing and medicines optimisation skills. 127 133–135 140 146 148 150 IP held tangible advantage over former methods of accessing prescribed medicines which involved request, referral and/or the counter-signing of prescriptions by doctors. Subject to GP workload 132 142 144 and constrained availability, 140 142 144 146 these methods were labour intensive, 140–142 144 146 inefficient 136 140 141 146 and burdened services and patients through the need for additional healthcare contacts.…”

“…UK non-medical prescribing training programmes employ profession-specific or interprofessional models, delivering 26 days equivalent full-time education alongside a supervised learning in practice period. 127 Given the onus for safe prescribing, programmes were reported by students and nurse/pharmacist prescribers to be academically rigorous. 129 146 There was evidence however that students lacked key knowledge about generic training models, 143 the learning expectations of different pedagogies, 127 as well as course assessment and portfolio requirements.…”

“… 128 Despite organisational requirement to confirm study leave arrangements pre-training, primary care allocation was highly unstandardised, with some students entering training without a confirmed agreement. 128 Prepared practice mentors with clarity on their role obligations in general provided a higher level of input to students, 127 and good mentor–student relationships that continued post-training facilitated transition. 132 Additional training buddying schemes helped students better manage the competing demands of training while working, although time constraints limited their uptake.…”

“…It was recognised that self-confidence and competence development were essential for prescribing 137 147 and mitigated anxiety, 146 but were highly dependent on exposure to prescribing opportunities, 146 147 time 137 147 and above all, the level of available support. 127 132 139 146 147 Without a channel for accessing supervision, nurses/pharmacists could doubt competence, lose confidence and defer from prescribing. 147 This led to a lack of competence development and underutilisation of IP 147 and suggests that greater acknowledgement of transitional developmental needs is necessary.…”

A Review of Strategies for Enhancing Clarity and Reader Accessibility of Qualitative Research Results

“…Thus, the examined studies were collected in a manner analogous to purposeful sampling. 46 The inclusion criteria resulted in a sample of 40 studies to analyze for this project: two in dentistry/dental hygiene, 47,48 10 in medicine, [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] 10 in nursing, [59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] four in occupational therapy, [69][70][71][72] eight in pharmacy, [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80] two in physical therapy, 81,82 and four in social work. [83][84][85][86] The authors were typically a mix of clinicians (eg, MD), clinician-scientists (eg, RN-PhD), and/or social scientists (eg, PhD in education).…”