Introduction: Nurse practitioners (NP's) are highly skilled and experienced registered nurses who are required to have  three years full-time experience at the clinical advanced nursing practice level within the past six years, hold masters  level qualifications and endorsement with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. There is inadequate awareness and understanding of NP roles by the general public, other health professionals and employers. This can act as a barrier through inaccurate perceptions about NPs’ scope of practice. In order to function effectively NP's must be able to prescribe all essential palliative care medicines, including Schedule 8 opioids medicines. A  palliative care NP role has been established at a cancer centre in Melbourne Victoria for more than 10 years. The position was developed with the aim of improving service capacity, equity of access for patients and support for family members and other Health Care Providers (HCP).

 

Aims: 

Outline the framework that supports palliative care nurse prescribing.

Provide a snapshot of the prescribing practices of a palliative care nurse practitioner working in an outpatient setting in a comprehensive centre.

 

Description/ Methodology:  

A retrospective audit of the prescribing activity arising from NP consultations for the period January 2022 to June 2022.

 

Results: During this 6 month period,  742 medications were prescribed over 580 consultations. 482 medications were opioids.  The NP operates from a diverse formulary but only prescribed within their field of expertise and scope of practice. There have been zero incidents or adverse events reported from NP prescribing at our centre.

Conclusions: This audit demonstrates that NPs practising within their specialist expertise can prescribe medicines safely and effectively. We would recommend that other services consider the development of NP positions as part of their multidisciplinary team.