Iranian Nurses' Attitudes and Readiness for Nurse Prescribing: A Cross Sectional Study

Since prescribing is a new subject in the nursing profession, it is necessary to assess nurses' attitudes to and readiness for this new responsibility.

This study aimed to investigate nurses' attitudes to and readiness for nurse prescribing in teaching hospitals of Tabriz City, Iran.

This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted on 335 nurses working in the hospitals of Tabriz from June to October 2019. The participants were selected with a stratified random sampling method, and study data were collected using a two-part questionnaire: demographics and the nurse prescribing questionnaire.The demographics were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient and the Mann-Whitney U tests were employed to examine the correlation and to compare the mean scores, respectively. The significance level for all tests was determined to be less than 0.05.

About 82.1% of participants were female, 59.7% were working in general wards, and 42.1% were in critical care units. The results showed that the mean ±SD scores of attitude and readiness were 34.79 ±8.15 and 36.99 ±6.01, respectively. Moreover, 71.6% of nurses agreed with nurse prescribing. The results showed that the score of attitudes towards prescribing the drug was significant in terms of gender (P = 0.039), employment status (P = 0.032), work experience (P =0.041), and academic degree (P = 0.028). Also, results showed readiness to implement was significant in terms of gender (P = 0.028), employment status (P = 0.049), work experience (P = 0.037), and academic degree (P = 0.042). Finally, there was a positive and significant correlation between nurses' attitudes toward and readiness for prescribing (P = 0.042, rs=0.626).

Because nurses have a positive attitude toward and are ready for prescribing, it is
possible to make them more prepared for this new role by increasing their pharmacological knowledge and improving their accountability.