Publication year: 2011
Source: Social Science & Medicine, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 16 June 2011
Marjorie Cecilia, Weiss
Nurses and pharmacists gained the right to prescribe as independent prescribers in the UK in 2007. Independent prescribers are responsible for the initial assessment of patients with diagnosed and undiagnosed conditions. Public policy discourse and the views expressed by health care professionals have conceptualised diagnostic decision making as being at a ‘higher level’ and more difficult than prescribing decision making. This paper presents five themes related to this premise. Firstly diagnostic decision making is put into the broader context of clinical reasoning which underpins all types of clinical decisions including both diagnostic and prescribing decisions. Secondly, the nature of diagnostic…