UCC SONM 25 Year Book

UCC / School of Nursing and Midwifery

First Group of Postgraduate Certificate in Nurse Prescribing.

POSTGRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN NURSE PRESCRIBING

In 2007, the then Head of School (Professor Geraldine McCarthy) was requested by the Department of Health to deliver a prescribing programme at UCC, which would provide nurses with a Diploma in prescribing medication. UCC was one of only two initial sites in the country chosen by the DOH to offer this new six-month programme, the other being the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin. At the end of the course, nurses are registered to prescribe drugs within their work parameters, for example, a nurse who works with an endocrinologist will be proficient in prescribing diabetic-type drugs. Nurse/Midwife Prescribing is one of very few postgraduate education courses available nationwide relating to prescriptive authority. It draws together a broad-based approach to contemporary issues in the field. This course provides candidates with the educational foundation to develop their career, offering them a pathway to the second year of the MSc in Nursing within UCC. This in turn supports candidates’ progression to Clinical Nurse Specialist and Advanced Nurse Practitioner roles within nursing.

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