Putting mental health nurse prescribing into practice

The introduction of supplementary prescribing formed part of an attempt to modernize the NHS, break down barriers across and within professions and enable patients to gain faster and easier access to medicines. Mental health nurses have been slower than other nursing specialities to take on the prescribing role. A number of reasons have been proposed for this including fears that the use of non-pharmacological interventions in mental health nursing could be marginalized. This focus group study set out to examine a group of mental health nurse prescribers working within a single organization and examine why some of these nurses put their prescribing role into practice and others did not. Findings suggest that organizations need to be clear about the scope and role specification of these prescribing roles. The availability and support of role models is important as the prescribing training course may generate, rather than abate, uncertainty about prescribing ability. In the absence of a critical mass of non-medical prescribers the prescribing initiative is being rolled out unevenly across teams, creating service inequities. Collaboration, particularly within teams, is vital for nurse prescribers to feel supported. Finally, to appreciate the true impact of the nurse prescribing role, any evaluation of benefits should be widened beyond the mere counting of scripts.