NURSES are now permitted to prescribe medication 'under clinical guidelines' and in line with requirements set by their individual regional health authorities.
Until now, only doctors, podologists and odontologists have been allowed to prescribe medication, and nurses only permitted to administer drugs under the instructions of one of these.
A restricted law introduced in 2015 upset nurses, who felt they were being treated as second-class health professionals and that they were being hindered in their work, to the detriment of patients, although they admitted that the terms of the new legislation did offer them greater protection and better comfort for patients.
Back in 2015, thinkSPAIN spoke to a number of nurses who explained how far the new law enabled them to act in terms of medication – they would be permitted to give a paracetamol for a headache, but not, for example, morphine.
Until then, a patient in A&E who was in pain would not be able to get any relief unless a doctor was available to authorise it, and night nurses were not allowed to provide any drugs for pain which had not already been agreed by a doctor, meaning the patient may have to suffer until the doctor's rounds during the late morning, as on-call medics only attend to emergencies.
Giving an aspirin to a patient with a headache when there was no doctor available to prescribe it could mean a nurse being fired and struck off for 'practising without a licence', which is in fact a criminal offence that could even lead to a suspended custodial sentence.
Despite this, the nurses who spoke to thinkSPAIN said they studied the same amount of credits in pharmacology at university as doctors do, and that many nurses are even more highly-qualified than doctors – whilst a nursing degree is much shorter than a doctor's studies, many nurses go on to take a master's or PhD to specialise further.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com