Prescriptive Authority:: Debunking Common Assumptions

Prescription of drugs is an act integral to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment cycle in the provision of primary care. To provide primary care and specialty services, advanced practice nurses are seeking prescriptive authority. This article examines the historical development of medical prescriptive authority, challenges four commonly held assumptions regarding prescriptive authority for nurses, and discusses how medicine's dominance in prescriptive authority for nurses, and discusses how medicine's dominance in prescriptive authority relates to nursing's struggle for power and autonomony. Nurses must direct their political and educational activities toward developing true structural and attitudinal autonomy in all aspects of nursing practice.