Survey of patients' experiences and perceptions of care provided by nurse and pharmacist independent prescribers in primary care

Abstract

Background In the United Kingdom, nurses and pharmacists who have undertaken additional post-registration training can prescribe medicines for any medical condition within their competence (nonmedical prescribers, NMPs), but little is known about patients' experiences and perceptions of this service.

Stakeholders' views and experiences of pharmacist prescribing: a systematic review

“…The majority of those patients who had consulted with a pharmacist prescriber were highly satisfied with the consultation overall, particularly the pharmacist's competence and capability, considering their prescribing to be as effective and safe as their physician. They also gave positive feedback relating to the pharmacist's personality, knowledge and communication skills as well as the consistency, accessibility, length and outcome of the care received .…”

“…The main stakeholder group studied was pharmacists (n = 27, 42%), including those registered as prescribers [22,26,29,63,67,80], nonprescribers [23, 24, 30, 32, 44-48, 51, 55, 56, 73, 74], or mixed prescribers and nonprescribers [19,20,37,58,60,66,70]. Fewer studies investigated the perceptions of patients (n = 12, 19%) [18,25,27,31,34,36,38,52,54,64,68,71], doctors (n = 6, 9%) [21,40,42,61,75,82], the general public (n = 4, 6%) [28,33,49,57], nurses (n = 1, 2%) [43] or policymakers (n = 1, 2%) [76]. Fourteen studies reported multiple stakeholder perspectives [35,39,41,50 While most studies (n = 41, 63%) provided a standardized or legislative definition of pharmacist prescribing, 24 (37%) did not [19, 21, 25, 30, 31, 36-38, 40-43, 46, 49, 50, 52-54, 57, 73, 77-80].…”

Patient satisfaction from two studies of collaborative doctor – pharmacist prescribing in Australia

“…A recent study from the UK ascertained views from patients on the impact of prescribing by nurse and pharmacist prescribers, including satisfaction with the consultation and the impact on choice, access, quality of care, knowledge, adherence and control of their condition . The results showed a high satisfaction with their last consultation, and a good relationship with, and high confidence in, their non‐medical prescriber.…”

Patients' valuation of the prescribing nurse in primary care: a discrete choice experiment

“…In turn, this can assist the re‐configuration of primary care services to substitute appropriate nursing consultations for medical ones. To date, there is some evidence that patients have positive experiences of NIP services, but these findings are of limited usefulness as they do not measure value‐based patient preferences …”