The Barbara Lumpkin Prescribing Act (Article Sample)

The Barbara Lumpkin Prescribing Act Name: Institution: The Barbara Lumpkin Prescribing Act Brief Description of the Bill The Bill (s. 464.012, F.S), will come into effect on January 1, 2017. This legislation offers physician assistants (PA) and advanced registered nurse practitioners (ARPNs) the authority to prescribe some controlled substances after obtaining a federal DEA number, thereby allowing them to prescribe the controlled substances (Winkle, Knudson, & Kynoch, 2016). The Bill allows the nurses and the physician assistants to receive a limited supply of the controlled substances within the seven days. However, the bill excludes psychotropic medications for children, which requires a psychiatrist’s prescription. The bill was named after Barbara Lumpkin, who lobbied for the bill after serving the nursing association for almost half a century in Florida. She remains the only citizen to have a draft law named after her because she was very vocal about it since she decided to join politics after working in the health industry for sixteen years. ARPNs The bill authorizes the ARPNs and Pas in Florida to prescribe controlled drugs. Essentially, this is a new privilege offered to them, thus adding to their regular duties of administering, dispensing and sample handling. With the introduction of the new regulation that enables them to prescribe, the nurses will be allowed to appoint, distribute, manage and even request for medications, however, this can also be limited by the physicians in question (LaPolt, 2016). Pros Allowing the psychiatric APRNs to prescribe the controlled drugs is beneficial to the state of Florida. The city experiences health practitioners shortage, especially nurses. Hence, allowing them multitasking and prescribing controlled drugs will free up the physicians to concentrate on treating the patients. Also, this offers the nurses an on-job learning opportunity concerning the controlled substances. Cons There are high chances of the ARPNs prescribing the wrong medication due to lack of experience. Hence, the mortality rate in the psychiatric department might increase. Secondly, conflicts may arise between the physicians and the ARPNs since they may fail to agree on who has the mandate of prescribing the controlled substances. Notably, the bill requires registered nurses to obtain three hours of continued learnin...