The Ohio House of Representatives has passed a bill that would give advanced practice nurses the authority to prescribe powerful pain medications.
House Bill 206 passed by an overwhelming 85-13 margin and moves onto the Senate for consideration.
The bill gives nurses the power to prescribe refills of Schedule II controlled substances, which include highly addictive drugs like oxycodone, Ritalin and morphine. Nurses would have that authority only if a doctor had previously described the drugs for a patient.
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Currently, nurses can prescribe only one day’s worth of Schedule II drugs, and only if the medication had been previously prescribed by a doctor.
More than 30 states have laws that allow APNs to prescribe medications. Ohio’s hesitancy has been predicated on the addictive nature of the drugs, which makes them ripe for abuse.
The Ohio State Medical Association (OSMA) has opposed the bill largely because of that concern. The association wants a provision to specify in what locations, such as hospitals and hospices, nurses could prescribe the drugs.
Given the well-document shortage of primary care physicians in the U.S.–which is only expected to get worse in the coming years–expanding nurses’ powers seems in many ways inevitable.
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Advanced practice nurses hold at least master’s degrees, and in almost a dozen states are regularly allowed to take on many of the roles of primary-care physicians. The Ohio Nurses Association says half of the state’s 8,000 advanced practice nurses, in collaboration with doctors, already take on some duties of primary-care physicians.
Photo from flickr user somegeekintn