Extended prescribing by UK nurses and pharmacists: Supplementary prescribing by mental health nurses seems promising

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7528.1337-b

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

Letter

Extended prescribing by UK nurses and pharmacists

Supplementary prescribing by mental health nurses seems promising

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

EDITOR—We recently conducted a qualitative evaluationstudy assessing the impact of mental health nurse supplementarynurse prescribing, addressing some of the issues raised by Averyand Pringle.¹

Eleven service users, most with a diagnosis of psychosis, wereinterviewed about their experiences of the prescribing scheme,as were 12 consultant psychiatrist independent prescribers and11 trained nurse prescribers. At the time of the interviews,eight of the nurse prescribers had prescribed psychiatric drugs.

The interviews for the nurses and psychiatrists focused on thequality of the training, support, and supervision; physicalhealth care; and the experiences of providing a prescribingintervention. The service user interviews focused on their perceptionof involvement in treatment decisions, the management of adverseeffects, and the quality of the relationship with the prescribingnurse.

Some key themes emerged from the data. Service users reportedthat nurse prescribers provided a greater focus on collaborationand . . . [Full text of this article]

Martin Jones, nurse consultant

martin.jones@thh.nhs.uk
Hillingdon Primary Care Trust, Middlesex UB8 3NN

Dawn Miller, research assistant, Ben Lucas, clinical director for adult mental health

Hillingdon Primary Care Trust, Middlesex UB8 3NN

Joanna Bennett, workforce development lead

Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, London SE1 1LB

Richard Gray, senior lecturer

King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AE