Independent nurse prescribers across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are calling for urgent reform of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, arguing that the current legislation is placing patients and practitioners at risk.
Unlike nurses in Scotland, independent nurse prescribers in other parts of the UK are not legally permitted to hold prescription-only medicines (POMs) as stock.
This can severely impact the reasonable standard of care in emergency situations and limit the ability of nurses to provide safe, efficient, and effective care at the point of delivery, when patients need it most.
The risks
In Northern Ireland, independent nurse prescribers are prohibited from holding emergency stock, despite the fact that medicines are considered mandatory in the management of serious complications in order to ensure patient safety and in some instances, in order to save life.
Instead, nurse prescribers must secure prescriptions for each individual patient on a named patient basis when required., likely resulting in avoidable delays in treatment.
This significantly raises the risks to patients in time-critical emergencies.
The risk of vascular occlusions can lead to blindness and the risk of sepsis, which can lead to death. The risk of sepsis is the most serious complication of an infection.
Without quick treatment, sepsis can progress quickly, lead to organ failure and the risk of death increases by 7.6% for every hour that passes without treatment, causing death in as little as 12 hours.
Inequality
This legislative barrier for nurses discriminates against nurses working in private practice, restricting their ability to operate independently, whilst doctors and dentists face no such impositions or restrictions on independent practice.
Recent actions by the medicines regulatory bodies in Northern Ireland have targeted nurse-led medical aesthetic practices, further compounding the discrimination and intimidation that has led to fear and anxiety amongst nurses.
Following a series of raids on practices and clinics, nurses are suffering financial and legal expense by having to defend themselves in criminal and regulatory cases.
The situation in Northern Ireland raises serious concerns about the abuse of nurses and particularly, the misuse of Department of Health (DoH) resources because public money is being wasted by targeting nurses who have experienced heavy handed policing.
British Association of Medical Aesthetic Nurses
BAMAN and UK nurses are now calling on the government and regulatory bodies to:
- Amend the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 to allow independent nurse prescribers to hold stock within strict professional guidelines
- Ensure patient safety by allowing nurses to hold stock and thus reduce delays in emergency treatment, such as vascular occlusion reversal and the critical care which is crucial to prevent sepsis
- End the discrimination against nurses in independent practice by removing the impositions placed upon them that is preventing nurses from supporting patients, operating safely and efficiently, and fulfilling their mandatory duty to nurse their patients in accordance with the reasonable standard of care, as their counterparts in Scotland can do.
