Extended prescribing by UK nurses and pharmacists: Computer systems need to incorporate nurse prescribing

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7528.1337-a

BMJ 2005;331:1337 (3 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7528.1337-a

Letter

Extended prescribing by UK nurses and pharmacists

Computer systems need to incorporate nurse prescribing

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—In terms of the issue of nurse and pharmacist prescribingAvery and Pringle are right to raise the issue of patient safety,which must be at the heart of all we do.¹

We have been in the forefront of nurse prescribing in our generalpractice and have found both good practice and some frustrations.Intrinsically we have found our extended and supplementary nurseprescribing to be safe. Nurses by their training are drivenby the concept of competency, and we have found it central tothe way of working to assess and prescribe only within the boundsof clear competency. The introduction of safe nurse prescribinghas undoubtedly been helped by the presence of a strong andopen clinical team supporting the nurses throughout their initialtraining and on an ongoing basis. Our frustration has been thelack of integration of nurse prescribing with our clinical computersystem.