Nurse prescribing: implications for the life sciences in nursing curricula

The development of new roles, over recent years, for health care professionals, has meant that the boundaries between the different occupations are no longer as clear as they were in the past. For example, the reduction in junior doctors' hours in the United Kingdom (UK), has meant that nurses have had the opportunity to expand their practice into a variety of areas which were once exclusively the responsibility of doctors. One area in which nurses (in the UK) have expanded their practice is prescribing. This paper commences with an overview of the development of nurse prescribing and highlights the important role of the life sciences in the education and training of nurse prescribers. The major findings from studies examining the teaching and learning of these sciences in nursing curricula are presented, and the implications for post-qualifying courses enabling nurses to prescribe, and pre-registration nurse education programmes are discussed.