WHO wants to become a Good Prescriber ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Challenges in Prescribing Education:

"As a student APN I would come across situations and challenges in clinical with prescribing medications for patients and not even knowing where to start, 'What do I do, where do I start?'. The only reason I knew anything about writing a prescription was because I previously worked as a medical assistant in a very fast pace primary care site. It was not because that knowledge was formally provided, in a consistent way, in my training. When I took pharmacology, it was more about first pass effect, P450 inducers, and other concepts like that rather than actually going through the process of prescribing a medication.

 

Now it's ME who needs to make sure that the patient is prescribed the correct medication. What if I wrote it incorrectly? As a new APN, that is the last thing I want to do. It wasn't until later in my clinical training that my preceptor actually sat down with me and explained the principles of prescribing. Not all of my classmates can say that they had a preceptor that actually explained to them how to prescribe and why it was being prescribed.

 

If there is one piece of the education puzzle we could put together in APN training is better education on prescribing process...ask your teachers to explain the basics of prescribing at the very least. I could say that I wish this was a part of my training, but at the end of the day, I am the one to blame if a mistake is made. I wrote the prescription. Moving forward as a new WHNP I hope to ease the transition to practice for students that I mentor. I will start by teaching them to become a Good Prescriber."

 

                                                                    Jennifer Enrique APN, WHNP-BC