Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
Back to contents page
An evaluation of the new role of nurse prescriber within an
acute care NHS Trust
Kathryn Jones RN RSCN BSc MSc PGCE
Deputy Director of Nursing/ Director of Clinical Studies
St Mary’s NHS Trust
Praed Street
London W2 1NY
Tel 0207 886 6818/6057
Fax 0207 886 1843
e-mail kathryn.jones@st-marys.nhs.uk
Context
As little is known about the implementation of nurse prescribing
within the acute care setting in the UK (Latter and Courtenay 2004,
Latter et al 2004), one acute hospital NHS Trust was used as a case
study to evaluate the implementation of nine new nurse prescribing
roles. The aims of the study were to identify the background and
intended purpose of the nurse prescribing roles; to explore the
experiences of the prescribers and their teams; and to test the null
hypotheses that there were no differences in the roles of medical
and nurse prescribers.
Design and analysis
A single-case embedded design was used (Yin 2003) with three
clinical services used as units of analysis. Data were collected using
multiple methods including semi-structured interviews with Trust
staff (n=18), non-participant observation of patient-prescriber
consultations (n=52) and a patient survey (n=122) that used
validated rating scales (Horne et al 1999, 2001; Healthcare
Commission 2005). The data were analysed using Ritchie and
Spencer’s framework for qualitative data analysis (1994) as well as
with differential and inferential statistics.
Key findings
The study found that within the chosen case nurse prescribing was
clearly for patient benefit, through service delivery improvements
and by using staff skills differently. The nurse prescribers and their
colleagues were unanimously positive about the new roles and the
associated service changes and the impact that these then had on
patient care. For example that patients had more timely hospital
appointments and quicker access to their medicines. Although no
differences were found between the ways in which the doctors and
the nurses performed their prescribing roles, there was a
statistically significant difference between the satisfaction ratings of
- 436 -