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Nurses keen to be the first registered nurse prescribers are approaching Nursing Council with the first RN prescriber now likely to be authorised in October.

Nursing Review reported last month that new prescribing regulations come into force on September 20* allowing suitably qualified registered nurses (RNs) who meet Nursing Council prescribing standards to prescribe from a limited list of commonly used medicines.

The main pathway to RN prescribing rights will be through the new postgraduate diploma in prescribing being offered next year but some nurses who have already completed a prescribing practicum as part of their clinical master's degree can apply for prescribing authority this year.

"We have been contacted by several registered nurses interested in applying for prescribing rights," said Pam Doole, the Council's strategic policy manager. "We are pleased that there are nurses ready to take on this new responsibility." 

She said the council is recommending that interested nurses look at the guideline now up on its website and to make sure they had employer and prescribing mentor support for their new role. RN prescribers in primary health and specialty teams under the regulations must be supervised by a medical or nurse practitioner for the first 12 months of their prescribing practice.

Doole said the application process for nurses with Masters degrees will be released in September and will outline the evidence required to demonstrate current competence to practice including assessment against the Competencies for nurse prescribing (2016) which are also available on its website.

Meanwhile PHARMAC's consultation on amending the pharmaceutical schedule to extend its medicine subsidies to the patients of designated RN prescribers has closed. If approved the amendment and subsidy extension to RN prescribers will come into effect on October 1.

Doole said that was one of the legal steps still to be completed (also the gazetting of education and training requirements) so it did not expect to authorise any registered nurse prescribers until October.

The first prescribing nurse practitioner was authorised in 2003 and diabetes clinical nurse specialists have been prescribing as part of a collaborative team for the past five years.

The Council says all designated RN prescribers will be working in collaborative teams within primary health care and specialty services including general practice, outpatient clinics, family planning, public health, community and rural nursing.

The Council also emphasises that it is important that RN prescribers work in a team with a medical practitioner or a nurse practitioner so they can seek advice on diagnosis or treatment if a patient’s health concerns are more complex than they can manage.

The specific conditions that designated RN prescribers will be able to prescribe for include diabetes and related conditions, hypertension, respiratory diseases including asthma and COPD, anxiety, depression, heart failure, gout, palliative care, contraception, common skin conditions and infections. They are only able to prescribe from a restricted list of medicines.

At the same time in June that the RN prescribing regulations under the Medicine Act (1981) were approved the Misuse of Drugs Act (1974) regulations were amended to allow RN and pharmacist prescribers to prescribe from a limited schedule of controlled drugs and to allow designated RN prescribers to issue prescriptions for a seven day supply of controlled drugs.

*Date corrected on September 16 2016