Updated: 23/05/2005

Research announcement: nurse prescribing in Scotland

The first major study of nurse prescribing in Scotland has been announced. It will be carried out by the Public Health Research Group in the Department of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Stirling and will be funded by the Scottish Executive.

The research will aim to identify the benefits and challenges of nurse prescribing in Scotland so that its impact can be measured and will be led by Professor Andrew Watterson. It will involve a survey of all the nurse prescribers in Scotland by questionnaire.


Pharmacists need clinical data

Pharmacists will need access to appropriate clinical patient data if they are to carry out new roles such as supplementary prescribing, according to a report to Ministers by the All-Party Pharmacy Group (see here).

The report recommends that pharmacists should be given appropriate role-based access to patient information, ensuring consent and confidentiality are respected, and that pharmacists should be able to upload information about their patients to the Care Record.


Consultations on extending prescribing welcomed

The proposals to extend radically the prescribing powers of trained nurses and pharmacists contained in the two new consultations (see here and here) appear to have been warmly received so far by both professions.
Beverley Malone, General Secretary of the RCN, welcomed the consultation, saying that nurses, “deliver 80% of healthcare in the UK, making them ideally placed to prescribe and monitor medications. This is a sensible and logical extension to their role”. The RCN has been calling for the entire BNF to be opened up to prescribing nurses, one of the options listed in the consultation, for years.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) has welcomed the consultation (see here) and its President, Nicholas Wood, has said that independent prescribing was a logical extension of pharmacists’ current clinical role (The Pharmaceutical Journal 5 March, p257). In the same article, the National Pharmaceutical Association (NPA)’s chief executive John D’Arcy is quoted as saying that pharmacists already prescribe privately and the NPA has wanted an NHS scheme for years.


 

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