The future for mental health non-medical prescribers

The NHS Plan (Department of Health, 2000) envisaged that widening the scope of nurse prescribing would offer service improvement by reducing delays incurred through waiting for a doctor to prescribe. To date, 14% of the mental health nurse prescribers in Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust are prescribing independently. The Transforming Community Services initiative, with its transfer of community practitioners, has highlighted differences in prescriptive authority. This article describes how research into non-medical prescribing within Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust has been used to inform service delivery.