Seeking new law for right to write prescriptions

Dozens of Georgia nurses will rally at the State Capitol Thursday, pushing for legislation aimed at increasing access to health care and promoting patient safety for Georgians.

One of the key measures in this effort is the battle by Advanced Practice Registered Nurses or APRNs (nurses with advanced education) to win the right to write prescriptions. Leadership from the Georgia Nurses Association and the United Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (UAPRN) are working together through this event to improve Georgia’s health care system.

Linda Easterly, RN, BSN, MS, COHN-S, President of the Georgia Nurses Association understands how prescriptive authority will improve quality, enhance patient safety and increase access to health care.

“The passing of the prescriptive authority bill will only serve to ease the ‘trilemna’ of the health care conundrum in the state of Georgia — quality, access and patient safety,” said Easterly. “As nurses, we make it our collective mission to further our profession while continuing to provide high-quality, standardized care to each patient in need.”

While the battle to win the “right to write prescriptions” has been going on for nearly a dozen years in Georgia, this year is different. Two proposed measures addressing the issue remain alive in both the House and the Senate and are ready for review by legislators this session. Both bills (HB 935 & SB 313) were introduced in the Legislature last year, but too late for a vote to occur and they were carried over to the 2006 session.

Both organizations have been working to garner support for their cause from the medical community as a whole. Another difference this year is that there are several prominent physicians who will attend the rally in support of the APRNs right to sign prescriptions. The partnership and collaborative work between the APRN and the MD is a powerful link in the health care delivery system that can only be enhanced by the granting of prescriptive authority.

“We just want to practice to the full scope that we were trained to practice,” said Karen Schwartz, Chairman of Georgia’s APRNs Grassroots Committee.

Schwartz says APRNs have advanced degrees beyond the designation of a registered nurse. “We are nationally certified and 49 other states have deemed our education strong enough to write prescriptions within our scope of practice, while continuing to work in collaboration with doctors.”

APRNs say the ability to write prescriptions will allow practices to function more efficiently, reduce patient wait times and cut health care costs. Although they are currently allowed to phone them in to the pharmacy, Georgia is the only state in the nation where nurse practitioners are not allowed to write their own prescriptions. They say it would also promote better documentation, with a paper trail allowing pharmacists to fill prescriptions more efficiently.

Nurse practitioners believe the measure would also improve access to health care in rural and other underserved areas in Georgia where there is a shortage of doctors, and where APRNs would be willing to work once they are allowed to practice within the full scope of their training.

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