Ask an NP – Prescriptive Authority

00:01 So a lot of nurses can be nervous about being able to prescribe medicine as a nurse practitioner.

00:07 It's a huge responsibility, right? But there's some things you can definitely do.

00:11 And then a whole mindset shift to kind of understand prescribing things, right.

00:15 And so the first is when you're nervous look it up.

00:18 Epocrates is a great app.

00:19 You can go in, make sure nothing is going to be contraindicated, Make sure you know how it works. So you can say like, "Hey, you know, if this person's kidneys aren't great, are we filtering it through there? What are we looking at?" Feel free to call pharmacists. Pharmacists are not scary.

00:33 They call up your local pharmacy and be like, "Hey, is this okay? They're on this. I was going to add this." They'll let you know, really quickly if it's a go or not.

00:40 And just run it by a colleague.

00:41 I can't tell you how many times in the first year I just said, "I'm going to throw somebody on this for their blood pressure." You know, run a few details by them.

00:48 They might have a different medicine or something where they would say, "Hey, I think that's a great idea or not." The fear honestly goes away pretty quickly." In the beginning, you're going to look up everything on and on and on.

00:58 And as you get more comfortable with it, it's going to get easier.

01:02 And the biggest thing I would probably say surrounding all of this is you are going to probably narrow it down to 20 meds you prescribe all the time, right? And you're going to get really familiar with those.

01:11 You're going to know the nuances of them, what the side effects are.

01:13 You're going to have your whole -- you're going to be comfortable with them.

01:16 And to be honest, most people you have your little box of 20 and you rarely stray outside of it.

01:21 So it's not like you have to know absolutely everything that school kind of shows you you will because you're going to have your little comfort group and that makes it a lot more, it gives you a lot of peace of mind when you know, these are my friends.

01:32 I'm used to hanging out with these friends and if we stray outside, we have resources like the pharmacy, you pocket is all of that, but it's really not a whole lot at the end of the day.