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Nurse prescribing and the enhancement of mental health services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2006

Peter Nolan ,
Eleanor Bradley  and
Neil Carr
Peter Nolan
Affiliation:
Professor of Mental Health Nursing, Faculty of Health and Sciences, Staffordshire University, Stafford, UK
Eleanor Bradley
Affiliation:
Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Health and Sciences, Staffordshire University, Stafford, UK
Neil Carr
Affiliation:
Director of Nursing and Operations, South Staffordshire Healthcare NHS Trust, Stafford, UK
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Extract

Abstract

Mental health nurses are relative latecomers to nurse prescribing. This is primarily because nurse prescribing has been seen as more appropriate for general nurses, particularly those working in the community or primary care. Pharmacists and psychiatrists were concerned about the complexity of prescribing for clients with mental health problems and felt that the training of mental health nurses and their clinical experience did not fit them to take on a prescribing role. These, and other impressions, may have influenced which groups of nurses were first selected to become nurse prescribers. However, recent studies have indicated that mental health nurses add considerably to the effectiveness of assessments and care plans, and that they are in an ideal position to integrate drug treatments with a wide range of non-pharmacological therapies knowledgeably, safely, effectively and in a manner that is acceptable to the patient. They have also been found to have an important role to play in monitoring the side effects of drugs and in providing education about medication, and in maintaining a therapeutic alliance with clients on long-term drug treatment. Whatever the limitations, mental health nurses as prescribers may still be deemed to have by some professional groups, and even by themselves, at this stage in the evolution of nurse prescribing, it is now inevitable that they will play a significant part in the overall improvement of mental health services during this decade. They are likely to challenge the existing prescribing practices and help in identifying the conditions under which medication is most therapeutic.

Keywords

mental health nurse prescribingholistic care: concordancepharmacological interventionstherapeutic relationshipsmedicationprescribing by proxyside-effects
Type
Focus On
Information
Nurse Prescriber , Volume 1 , Issue 11 , November 2004 , pp. 1 - 9 , e207
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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