iranian nurses' attitudes and readiness for nurse prescribing: a cross sectional study

Introduction: since prescribing is a new subject in the nursing profession, it is necessary to assess nurses’ attitudes and readiness for this new responsibility.objective: this study aimed to investigate nurses’ attitudes and readiness for nurse prescribing in teaching hospitals of tabriz city, iran. materials and methods: 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.results: 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).conclusion: because nurses have a positive attitude toward and are ready for prescribing, it ispossible to make them more prepared for this new role by increasing their pharmacological knowledge and improving their accountability.