Nurse practitioners play a critical role in enhancing the provision of quality healthcare to the patients. Nursing bodies such as the American Association of Nursing Practitioners (AANP) advocates for the nurse practitioners to have no restrictions in prescribing medication to the patients because they undergo advanced training and education that prepare them adequately to execute such healthcare services (Smolowitz, & Whelan, 2015). Various studies in America show that NPs provide safe, cost-effective, and high quality healthcare to the patients. Prescribing medication by APRNs is a central component of the NP role and crucial to NP practice, and therefore restricting them on prescriptive authority compromises the ability of NPs to provide quality healthcare to the patients.
When carrying out safe and ethical prescribing, APRNs have the responsibility of conducting a comprehensive interview of patients to obtain necessary information, including a complete medication list that helps in the analysis of possible interactions and side effects of medication on the patients. APRNs should also apply their pharmacological knowledge to the patients through their stages of their lives, particularly to those who are under multiple medicines. Responsibilities such as considering drug cost when prescribing as well as determining the therapeutic objective of the drug therapy is necessary for the APRNs when prescribing medication (Kooienga & Wilkinson, 2017). It is also essential for APRNs to use appropriate software such as that of prescribing and electronic drug references because it helps in reducing the errors that occur during medical prescription.
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APRNs experience some of the challenges when it comes to medical prescriptions. One of the barriers includes state practice and licensure that regulates the practices of NPs (Hudspeth, 2016). The regulations can allow or restrict a nurse from practicing some of the health practices and contribute to one of the barriers that hinder APRNs from carrying out the prescription. Another obstacle is that related to physicians and associations such as the American Medical Association believe that physicians have more qualification in comparison to NPs because they go through long and rigorous training. Having such consideration is a barrier to the NPs because they look unable to provide quality healthcare that includes prescription of safe medication. Payer policies contribute to the obstacles of NPs towards prescribing because it affects their ability to practice to the fullest. In most cases, payer policies have a connection with state practice regulation and licensure and having strict state regulations when cause the payer policies to limit the NPs to practice independently and provide services such as medical prescriptions.
References
Hudspeth, R. S. (2016). Standards of care for opioid prescribing: What every APRN prescriber and investigator need to know. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 7(1), 15-20.
Kooienga, S., & Wilkinson, J. (2017). RN prescribing: an expanded role for nursing. In Nursing forum, 52 (1), 3-11.
Smolowitz, J., Speakman, E., Wojnar, D., & Whelan, E. M. (2015). Role of the registered nurse in primary health care: meeting health care needs in the 21st century. Nursing Outlook, 63(2), 130-136.
