Hospital nurses' perceptions of pharmacist prescribing

The final report from the Crown review team was published in March 1999. It proposed that new groups of healthcare professionals should be permitted to prescribe medicines. Most of the recent progress has centred on the extension of community nurse prescribing. However, changes have also been proposed to prescribing practices within the hospital setting to include nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals. This study is an initial piece of work examining hospital nurses' perceptions of pharmacist prescribing to identify if there are issues that warrant further investigation. Postal questionnaires, seeking responses to statements describing pharmacists writing prescriptions for drug treatment, were sent to 200 nurses at five NHS teaching hospitals in Birmingham. Completed questionnaires were received from 115 nurses (a response rate of 57.5%). Fifty-four respondents added comments to the questionnaire, giving some insight into their responses to the statements on pharmacist prescription-writing and prescribing. These comments indicated five key issues that may warrant further investigation: (1) pharmacists' knowledge of the patient (2) doctors losing the opportunity to review drug treatment (3) potential communication problems (4) pharmacists' workload, and (5) legal and professional accountability.