Opinion on the benefits of nurse prescribing in Catalonia. Consensus of health professionals and managers

Objective

To study the level of agreement among health professionals and managers in Catalonia on the benefits of nurse prescribing (NP).

Method

An online Real Time Delphi was conducted to collect the level of agreement of health professionals and managers. Participants voted in a 6-point scale (1 low benefit and 6 high benefit) for 12 items describing benefits of NP. A total of 1332 professionals participated. The level of consensus was calculated applying interquartile ranges of scores and standardized mean differences among subgroups using effect sizes (ES) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals.

Results

The scores indicate a general agreement on the perceived benefits of NP among participants. Standardized differences among scores on the perceived benefits among professionals were small to high (ES range between 0.2 and 1.2) between nurses and medical doctors and high between nurses and pharmacists (ES range: 1.2 and 2.4). Differences between scores of nurses and those of managers or other professionals in the present study were smaller for most voted benefits.

Conclusions

The study shows an agreement on the benefits of NP. Nevertheless, when standardized scores are taken into consideration, differences among professionals’ perceptions emerged, and aligned with documented barriers identified in the literature such as corporative aspects, cultural limitations, institutional and organisational inertia, beliefs and unawareness of what NP implies.