Prescribing with Precision: What Nurses and Midwives Must Know in 2025

Written by Jessica Boakye

The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) latest Useful Information for Prescribers guidance, effective in June 2025, outlines critical updates every nurse and midwife with prescribing rights must know to stay compliant and legally protected.

At its core, the guidance reinforces that prescribing is a regulated, accountable act and one that must align with The NMC Code and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Competency Framework. Nurses and midwives are accountable for clinical decisions and must always work within their individual scope of practice, ensuring clinical decisions are evidence-based, well-documented, and defensible.

A sharp spotlight is placed on remote prescribing. While technology has enabled flexibility, the NMC insists on rigorous standards. Virtual consultations are permissible but prescribers must still undertake appropriate clinical assessments, history taking and risk evaluations with the same standard of care applying regardless of delivery method. In deciding whether to prescribe online or remotely, nurses must consider that not all medicines are suitable to be prescribed by remote methods taking into account medicines likely to be subject to misuse or abuse and high risk medicines that need extra safeguards. 

The prescriber is always accountable for ensuring that remote prescribing is clinically justified, risk assessed and fully documented. Where nurses and midwives have been involved in administering medicines, there is the responsibility to raise concerns where prescribing has not been carried out appropriately especially where prescribed by another person.

Notably, from 1 June 2025, non-surgical cosmetic prescriptions will require face-to-face consultations with no exceptions. Independent nurse and midwife prescribers must conduct in person consultations, undertake and document an appropriate clinical assessment of the recipient before prescribing for non-surgical cosmetic procedures. In addition, nurses and midwives are not allowed to hold prescription medicines as stock. 

The guidance also clarifies that prescribing rights are non-transferable across roles. Crucially, from 13 December 2024, physician associates and anaesthesia associates are prohibited from prescribing, regardless of past qualifications.

In summary, this update in NMC guidance follows on from the need to tighten regulations around cosmetic procedures, which have been rising in popularity in the UK and with this, the NMC starkly puts patients at the forefront. If prescribing, nurses and midwives should know the rules, document thoroughly and never work beyond the registered professional scope.

If you wish to discuss this further, please get in touch with Julie Charlton or Monica Gosling.