Doctors have no time to mentor nurse prescribers
pharmafile | June 30, 2005 | News story | |
Doctors have expressed concern that they do not have time to act as mentors to independent nurse prescribers, according to new research from the Department of Health.
Medical mentorship is a crucial component in the training of independent nurse prescribers, who are being introduced by the health service as it looks to make the best use of nursing skills and increase patient access to medicines.
Research carried out by the University of Southampton revealed that doctors believe their busy schedules and the lack of financial reward offered to them for training nurses is compromising their role as mentors.
The research evaluated the first two years of extended formulary nurse prescribing, gauging the views of just under 250 nurse prescribers and other stakeholders.
Overall, nurses and patients were found to view independent nurse prescribing positively, with patients citing accessibility of obtaining their medicines from a nurse rather than a doctor as an advantage.
"The findings of this research indicate that nurse prescribing is operating safely and effectively in practice," said chief nursing officer Christine Beasley.
Skin conditions, family planning and soft tissue injuries were the most common conditions for which nurses were independently prescribing.
The majority of nurses said they were confident in their new prescribing roles, though a number were dissatisfied with the limitations of the formulary available to them.
In particular, nurses said they would like a greater number of antibiotics added to the formulary and were dissatisfied with the lack of access to computer-generated prescriptions.
On the whole, doctors were positive about the development of nurse prescribing although they remained undecided whether it had reduced their workload.
There are around 4,600 nurses qualified to independently prescribe from the formulary – less than 2% of the total number of nurses in the NHS – but the government aims to have more than 10,000 such nurses taking responsibility for the management of minor ailments by the end of the year.
