Extended nurse prescribing: improving care for older people

This article examines the benefits to older patients in a hospital setting, including assessment, diagnosis and treatment by a nurse who is competent in the field and has in-depth personal and professional knowledge of that person. It explores how this approach promotes individual high quality care through a patient-centred focus and empowerment while supporting the Department of Health and Scottish Executive Health Department's agenda for service redesign. It also explores how expansion of the extended independent nurse prescriber's formulary will not compromise patient safety. It recommends that nurses practicing in non-acute care areas consider developing as extended independent nurse prescribers to raise standards of patient-centred care delivered to older people in hospital. The Nurse Prescribers' Extended Formulary (British Medical Association and Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in association with Community Practitioners, Health Visitors' Association and Royal College of Nursing, 2003) is referred to throughout this paper as the nurses' formulary, nurse prescribers' formulary or nurse prescribers' extended formulary.