The 1998 Curriculum Guidelines and Regulatory Criteria for family nurse practitioners seeking prescriptive authority: what should we be teaching nurse prescribers today?

PURPOSE

The Provus Discrepancy Model is applied to suggest revisions to consensus curriculum and regulatory guidelines for nurse practitioners (NPs) seeking prescriptive authority.

DATA SOURCE

Literature review related to prescribing policy, regulation, NP role competencies, and pharmacologic trends.

CONCLUSION

The document "Curriculum Guidelines and Regulatory Criteria for Family Nurse Practitioners Seeking Prescriptive Authority to Manage Pharmacotherapeutics in Primary Care" should be examined for relevance to current prescribing practice, scope, and influences that emerged since publication.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

In order to prepare NPs of the future it is important to acknowledge the implications of increased autonomy, scope, and depth of practice that explicitly includes broad prescriptive authority.