5_1_ Non Medical Prescribing

Introduction and Background The Cumberlege Report (1986) identified that community nurses were using a lot of time waiting for prescriptions to be written by General Practitioners once they had already identified their patients’ needs (Courtney 2007). It was suggested that limited prescribing should be allowed for district nurses and health visitors, especially around long term conditions (Humphries 2002), in the context of a care plan. This was reviewed by June Crown in 1989, and test sites were set up to pilot nurse prescribing. In 1999, a further report from Crown was published which recommended that nurse prescribing be extended to other nurses in specialist roles, which was finally realised in 2001 (Courtney 2007).