Prescribing Procedures for Sexual Health Nurse Practitioner Essay

Introduction

The author has worked in Sexual health Department for the past 14 years and is currently employed as a nurse practitioner. The practitioner role entails working autonomously: taking accurate clinical histories, physical examinations, gains differential diagnosis & organises a plan of care. This plan of care often includes prescribing medications. It is increasingly becoming a necessity therefore in many specialist & autonomous nursing roles to become a Nurse Medical Prescriber (NMP) who will script the prescribing medication.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2018) states that only qualified NMPs, who has successfully completed the non–medical prescribing course, may write a prescription.

The aim of this essay is to discuss the prescribing that took place for a patient that presented with genital ulcers in the Sexual Health Clinic. This essay is structured by applying the prescribing pyramid to aid practice (NPC, 1999) & adhering to the first principle, considered to be a holistic assessment. Prescribing Procedures for Sexual Health Nurse Practitioner Essay

The essay will also demonstrate an evidence-based approach to practicing as a safe independent prescriber. This can be achieved by presenting and analysing a prescribing scenario of a patient encountered within a known area of practice of Sexual Health.

The case study used is based on a female patient Katy who attended for treatment of recurrence of Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV). While this essay has been written from the perspective of a prescriber, in reality the prescription issued for this consultation was written by a qualified prescriber. To maintain confidentiality, in line with the code of professional conduct, throughout this essay, all names of patients, clinicians, hospital and all community trusts have been changed as per (NMC 2018).