Registered nurses with additional post-graduate training will soon be able to prescribe. Here’s what it will mean for GPs.
The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia has published a first look at the registration standard for nurses who wish to become prescribers, a move that could change how nurses integrate with general practice.
To qualify as prescribers of Schedule 2, 3, 4 and 8 medicines, registered nurses (RNs) will have to complete board-approved postgraduate qualifications, demonstrate clinical experience and undertake a six-month clinical mentorship with an authorised health practitioner.
They will also have to partner with an authorised health practitioner under a clinical governance framework with an active prescribing arrangement while prescribing.
The standard will take effect from September 2025, but there are multiple other components which need to fall into place before registered nurses can start prescribing.
Technically, each state and territory has control over which professions can prescribe what medicines under its poisons legislation; each jurisdiction must amend its own individual legislation to allow endorsed nurses to prescribe.
According to the Nursing and Midwifery Board, the move will be especially beneficial to rural and remote Australians.
“The endorsement will … also help alleviate pressure points in both acute and primary care, where access to appointments is a challenge for healthcare consumers,” it wrote in a newly released fact sheet.
“This prescribing model improves resource use and strengthens care coordination.
“It allows designated RN prescribers to manage medicines in prescribing partnerships, freeing up other healthcare professionals to focus on more complex areas of patient care.”
Only RNs who have a current general registration with no conditions or undertakings, have the equivalent of three years’ full-time clinical experience over the past six years, and have completed certain qualifications can apply for the prescribing endorsement to be added to their registration.
Having the endorsement allows a nurse to administer, obtain, possess, prescribe, supply or use Schedule 2, 3, 4 and 8 medicines for the purposes of practice of nursing.
They will have to do an additional 10 hours of continuing professional development each year in order to keep the endorsement.
RNs working as sole practitioners or working in private practice must comply with additional requirements, which include a clearly documented prescribing agreement with an authorised practitioner, clearly articulated pathways for consultation and referral, and a documented list of medicines that the nurse can prescribe.
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Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association CEO Ken Griffin told The Medical Republic that RNs would be doing a significant amount of additional training in order to get the endorsement.
“When it comes to general practice, I think you’ll see interest from the perspective of chronic disease management,” he said.
“When you have a significant number of nurses doing chronic disease management plans and reviewing those and … prescribing repeats and all that kind of thing … that’s likely to be something that’s particularly helpful for general practice.
“We also think that it might save some of the frustrations GPs tend to have in the aged care settings … they won’t get as many medication requests from residential aged care facilities.
“I think this is likely to be something that provides a really good adjunct to the care that’s already provided.”
According to Mr Griffin, around one third of RNs currently in the workforce were planning further post-graduate study before the announcement of the prescribing endorsement; he suspects this number will have increased further since.
“One of the biggest issues for primary healthcare employers is retaining primary healthcare nurses, and that’s in regards to the practice nurses in general practice,” he said.
“What’s interesting about that is our workforce survey shows that those nurses working to their full scope stick around longer.
“A nurse who’s working to their full scope regularly or all the time is more than twice as likely to be in the profession five years from now, and at the same employer.”
The initiative was approved by the Health Ministers’ Meeting in December of 2024.
