Independent Prescribing Course

Entry requirements

All Nursing and Midwifery applicants must meet the following criteria:

• Valid registration on Part 1 of the Professional Register maintained by the NMC.
• Have at least one year’s post-registration clinical nursing experience.
• Have appropriate experience in the area of practice in which they will be prescribing; the employing organisation will assess and confirm the appropriate experience in areas of practice.
• An ability to study at academic level 6. Candidates without a first degree must provide evidence of being able to work at level 6 (e.g. Possession of a relevant diploma/degree), and may be asked to submit evidence of relevant experience and/or study.
• Support from the employing organisation whose responsibility it is to supply practice supervisors and practice assessors for the candidate.

All pharmacist applicants must meet the following criteria:

• Applicants are registered as a pharmacist with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) or, in Northern Ireland, with the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
• Applicants are in good standing with the GPhC and/or PSNI, and any other healthcare regulator with which they are registered.
• Applicants must have at least two years appropriate patient-orientated experience post registration, in a relevant UK practice setting.
• Applicants have an identified area of clinical or therapeutic practice in which to develop independent prescribing practice. They must also have relevant clinical or therapeutic experience in that area, which is suitable to act as the foundation for their prescribing practice while training.
• Have support from the sponsoring organisation (such as an NHS Trust or primary care organisation), including appropriate supervised practice in the clinical area in which they expect to prescribe, and an identified service need for this extended role.
• Applicants must have a designated prescribing practitioner (DPP) who has agreed to supervise their learning in practice.
• The applicant’s DPP must be a registered healthcare professional in Great Britain or Northern Ireland with legal independent prescribing rights, who is suitably experienced and qualified to carry out this supervisory role, and who has demonstrated CPD or revalidation relevant to this role. Although an applicant may be supervised by more than one person, only one prescriber must be the DPP. The DPP is the person who will certify that by the end of the course, the pharmacist independent prescribers in training is competent to assume the prescribing role.

Months of entry

November

Course content

This course has been developed to reflect the advanced levels of knowledge and skills required to become an Independent Prescriber.

Fundamental to this course is that pharmacists, midwives, nurses, paramedics and physiotherapists will be taught alongside one another and assessed using the same assessment criteria.

The course will follow the outline curricula of the accrediting bodies the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).

This course has been designed to facilitate practitioners in achieving prescribing competency as set out by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) document “A competency framework for all prescribers”, and in line with the Standards for prescribing set out by the respective regulators."

Information for international students

Applicants must be appropriately qualified healthcare professionals registered with either the NMC, GPhC or HCPC.

Fees and funding

For information on the funding options available for this course please visit our Student Money Pages.