Role of Advanced Nurse Practitioners in Prescribing
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Role of Advanced Nurse Practitioners in Prescribing
Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) have a valuable role in American healthcare. Advanced Nurse Practitioners provide the opportunity for patients to receive timely care and avoid unnecessary delays in receiving treatment (Duoquesne University, 2020). ANPs have several roles and responsibilities to improve patient care. For example, they provide acute, primary, and specialty healthcare to patients across the lifespan. ANPs also provide diagnosis, treatment, and prescription, among other duties (Mcgee, 2019). In that regard, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the roles and responsibilities of Advanced Nurse Practitioners in prescribing.
One of the primary functions of Advanced Nurse Practitioners includes prescribing medication and non-pharmacologic treatments. The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) acknowledges that prescribing is within the scope of nurse practitioners (Mcgee, 2019). It is important to note that the prescription authority of Advanced Nurse Practitioners is solely regulated by state boards of nursing, as well as, per the NP’s role, certification, and education (Mcgee, 2019). ANPs have the responsibility to attain the required education, experience, and certification required to practice prescription. To ensure safe prescribing, Advanced Nurse practitioners must obtain much information from patients either through verbal history or physical examination of the patients (Duoquesne University, 2020). Advanced nurse practitioners may also gather adequate information regarding the patient’s condition by ordering diagnosis and establishing the cause of treatment for the patient.
In their responsibilities as prescribers, Advanced Nurse Practitioners must also ensure the correct drug choice is made. There might be many types of medications available for a specific illness, however, they might have different effects on the patient (Duoquesne University, 2020). Nurse practitioners should ask themselves whether or not the drug is recommended and approved by the American Food and Drug Administration. If the drug is recommended and approved by the FDA, then the ANPs must look into what effects the medication might have on the patients.
Another thing is whether the patient can abide by the medication. If the patient is given a lot of drugs to take per day, he might find it hard to abide by and medication adherence may become an issue of concern. Patient and family participation is very important during prescribing to take care of such problems (Duoquesne University, 2020). Medication adherence is an important aspect of prescription, which leads to another responsibility of ANPs; patient education during prescribing. Another responsibility of the advanced nurse practitioner is to ensure cost-effective prescribing (Mcgee, 2019). The nurse practitioner is required to prescribe cost-effective medications for the patient. It is also their responsibility to assess whether the cost is a barrier to medication adherence. when prescribing, advanced nurse practitioners should have obtained financial and social information about the patient to ensure they offer appropriate support based on those factors (Duoquesne University, 2020). These important roles and responsibilities of Advanced Nurse Practitioners must be upheld to ensure successful and safe prescribing.
In summary, Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) are important healthcare providers in American health care. They have several roles and responsibilities to improve patient care. Their responsibilities include assessment, diagnosis, treatment, prescription, and others. Prescribing is an essential step in the treatment and care of patients. ANPs are required to gather as much information as possible about the patient before prescribing. Furthermore, the medications must be recommended and FDA approved. There are other many roles of APNs as discussed in this paper.
References
Duoquesne University. (2020). The APRN’s Role and Responsibility in Ethical Prescribing. https://onlinenursing.duq.edu/blog/aprns-role-responsibility-ethical-prescribing/
Mcgee, P. I. C. (2019). Advanced Practice in Healthcare: Dynamic developments in nursing and allied health professions, 4th edition. John Wiley.