Nurse and midwife prescriber numbers short of target

The HSE has paid for far more nurses to train as nurse prescribers than have registered to make themselves available for prescribing responsibilities.

A total of 894 nurses and midwives are registered to prescribe medicinal products — a responsibility that was previously reserved only for doctors — but more than 1,200 have been funded to undertake the six-month training programme.

The numbers are well short of the 1,500 that health chiefs expected would be prescribing for patients by 2014 when laws were enacted in 2007 to give nurses the extra powers.