ABSTRACT
According to the Department of Health (DH) (2004a) there are almost two-and-a-half million medicines prescribed to patients in hospital and the community every day. Safe medicines management is integral to the duties of all registered nurses, and as the profession has developed, the responsibilities of the nurse in this area have increased. Not so many years ago, nurses obediently followed doctors’ prescriptions and were expected to do no more. Now
nurses must have detailed knowledge of the medicines they administer, and make independent judgements about medicines management for those in their care. This shift is recognised in the professional language. Where once we discussed the nurse’s role in administering medicines, now the emphasis is on medicines management, encompassing administration and much more. Many nurses have completed independent prescribing courses and are now able to prescribe from a full range of medicines. This is the domain of experienced nurses, but from the first day of their registration all nurses are required to practise according to The Code (NMC 2008a), and be guided by other NMC guidance and publications, requiring a considerable amount of knowledge as well as the exercise of professional accountability.
