UNLABELLED In the United Kingdom, legislation permits nurses and allied health professionals to prescribe for patients within their care. Preparation for this role includes learning, teaching and assessment that is embedded in practice, supervised by a designated medical practitioner (DMP) and evidenced in a reflective learning in practice portfolio. AIM The objectives were to explore; (1) wh...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Future physicians are urged to balance effectiveness and cost in their prescribing of medications. This study determined whether educational sessions for residents together with a "Resident Report Card" changed residents' prescribing of generic medications in both commercial and Medicaid patient panels, compared with regional performance of physicians in practice in th...

An evidence based or “rational” approach to prescribing is thought to maximise the benefit and minimise the harm from prescription drugs. Unfortunately, prescribing often does not meet this ideal despite clinicians’ best intentions. We use treatment of chronic tophaceous gout to show how apparently irrational prescribing arises from several interacting “failures” in both clinical practice and d...

BACKGROUND Antibiotic resistance is a public health concern worldwide. A high proportion of antibiotics are prescribed in primary care, often for conditions where there is no evidence of benefit. Without a change in these prescribing patterns, resistance will persist as a significant problem in the future. Little is known about how trainees in general practice perceive and develop their prescri...

BACKGROUND Growing numbers of non-medical health professionals are attaining prescribing rights through post-registration non-medical prescribing (NMP) courses in the UK. However, not all implement prescribing post-qualification. This study evaluated the uptake and perceived usefulness of a mentoring scheme for two cohorts of NMP students at the University of Nottingham. The scheme paired stude...

Electronic prescribing is a form of paperless prescribing that is reported to reduce prescription mistakes and increases the cost effectiveness of the process. In England, around 1.5 million prescriptions are generated in general practice daily. Thus by reducing costs and increasing efficiency of this system through electronic prescribing, costs can be driven down. In this Quality Improvement p...

OBJECTIVES To quantify patients' preferences for new pharmacist independent prescribing services in general practice for managing common existing long-term conditions compared with usual medical prescribing. METHODS A discrete choice experiment cross-sectional survey was conducted in five general practices in England (October-November 2009). Four service attributes reported on the length of c...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effect on total prescribing costs and prescribing costs for respiratory drugs for practices with at least one general practitioner with a special interest in asthma. DESIGN Postal questionnaire survey. SETTING General practitioners in England and Wales. SUBJECTS 269 members of the General Practitioners in Asthma Group, of whom 103 agreed to participate. MAIN MEA...

UNLABELLED The Beers criteria (2003) and McLeod criteria (1997) have been applied internationally to quantify inappropriate prescribing in elderly populations. Similarly, guidelines have been published locally by the National Prescribing Service (NPS). OBJECTIVE This study aimed to adapt, evaluate and compare the utility of these three established criteria in measuring prescribing appropriate...

OBJECTIVE To explore the potential for community pharmacist prescribing in terms of usefulness, pharmacists' confidence, and appropriateness, in the context of asthma management. METHODS Twenty community pharmacists were recruited using convenience sampling from a group of trained practitioners who had already delivered asthma services. These pharmacists were asked to complete a scenario-base...