The progress of nurse prescribing in the United Kingdom

Nurse prescribing in England has made great strides in recent years. Building on the success of district nurse and health visitor prescribing – more than 23000 community nurses are now qualified to prescribe from the Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary for district nurses and health visitors – we implemented the extension to nurse prescribing from April 2002. This enabled nurses in secondary care, and midwives, to prescribe for the first time. The Nurse Prescribers’ Extended Formulary (NPEF), from which they can prescribe, includes all Pharmacy and General Sales List medicines that are prescribable by GPs, and a list of around 140 Prescription–only Medicines to treat conditions in four clinical areas: minor injuries, minor illness, health promotion and palliative care. Training to prescribe from the NPEF involves 25days of university-based education and 12days learning in practice, with the support of a medical prescriber. Around 800 nurses and midwives have already trained to prescribe from the NPEF. They include practice nurses, nurse practitioners and specialist nurses from acute hospitals, as well as nurses from emergency departments and Walk-in Centres.