Nurse prescribing in practice.

The President: Good evening everybody. This evening we have got a very important lecture and I am glad to see you have all come. Matt Griffiths is a Professor of Nurse Prescribing, or a visiting Professor. More substantially, he is a Senior Nurse with a long background in nursing, particularly in Accident and Emergency medicine, but most importantly from our point of view he is the Advisor to the RCN about Nurse Prescribing. This is an absolutely vital subject, which reflects what is happening to medicine in this country and has happened over the last ten years. Ten years ago nurse prescribing was virtually unknown; prescribing was regarded as being a monopoly of the medical profession. It was one of the few privileges which they had and it was so described as " a privilege " of the medical profession as a result of being registered under the Medical Act. Now the number of drugs which nurses cannot prescribe is confined to an extremely short list. Some people have likened the effects of this to the end of civilisation as we know it. Others have noticed that the end of civilisation seems to take other forms and has other causes. It may be a reflection of the fact that people who are nurses now are different in background and education and qualification and preparation for their job than they were ten years ago and the expectation of society hasn't been party to it. Matt is going to talk to us about that. He is going to tell us fundamentally what nurses do prescribe and how it has changed and how it is now regulated and talk to us about the advantages and disadvantages. So it is with great pleasure that I introduce Matt Griffiths to come and talk to us. (Applause) Professor Griffiths: Good evening. Thanks very much for inviting me to speak. What I am going to do this evening is to go through some of the background of nurse prescribing, some of the history, where we are today, and also some background into some research that has been done which actually shows what we are doing now in terms of practice. Whenever I do any public speaking I always look to my public speaking guru, a man called George W Bush. He once said: " I hope you leave here and walk out and say 'What did he …