Prescribing Practices of Nurse Practitioners in Relation to the Degree of Structural Autonomy Granted with their Prescriptive Authority. Executive Summary

摘要

Five states having various levels of autonomy for prescribing by nurse practitioners were utilized in the survey. Nurse practitioners were asked to log their prescribing for a ten day period. Findings of the study were that no systematic differences in the prescribing practices of NPs could be attributed to legal requirements. Differences in practices were attributed to the scope of practice and to the presenting problems rather than the structural autonomy controlling the prescribing of drugs.