Readiness to expand the role of the nurses working in primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia to include prescribing: An exploratory descriptive qualitative study

Albariq, Khloud 2024. Readiness to expand the role of the nurses working in primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia to include prescribing: An exploratory descriptive qualitative study. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Introduction: Primary healthcare centres (PHCs) in Saudi Arabia are the first point of contact for patients across the country (Al Saffer et al., 2021). However, these PHCs face various accessibility challenges, including unequal distribution of PHCs and their services (Al-Sheddi et al., 2023), a shortage of medical professionals (Al Saffer et al., 2021), a lack of specialised services (Makeen et al., 2020), and long waiting times (Albarhani et al., 2022). One way to enhance accessibility, reduce waiting times, and alleviate various burdens on the healthcare system in Saudi Arabia is to grant nurses prescribing rights (Hibbert et al., 2017; Almotairy et al., 2023). However, Saudi research into the readiness to incorporate the prescribing role into nursing practice in PHCs is currently lacking. This study aims to investigate readiness to incorporate the prescribing role into nursing practice in Saudi PHCs. Methods: An exploratory and descriptive qualitative (EDQ) research was used as the chosen methodology. Twenty-five individual semi-structured interviews were thus conducted with participants who were divided into three groups: this gave ten nurses at the micro-level, five nursing supervisors and five managers at the meso-level, and five policymakers at the macro-level. The collected data was then analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). Findings: Six key themes emerged from the data analysis. These were improving primary healthcare services, nurse-doctor partnership prescribing, educational preparation, acceptance of the nurse prescribing role, establishing the legality of the nursing prescribing practice, and readiness of primary healthcare centres. Conclusion: Implementing the nurse prescribing role in PHCs services has the potential to improve PHC services through enhancing accessibility and reducing waiting times. A nurse-doctor partnership prescribing approach may be implemented, in which nurses and physicians share prescribing responsibilities while doctors remain responsible for diagnosis. However, nurses’ general lack of pharmacological knowledge is a major obstacle, requiring additional focus on educational preparation. Another potential barrier could be a lack of acceptance of the nurse prescribing role among patients, doctors, and nurses. Several changes are thus necessary to existing systems, including the introduction of clear legislation and regulations and ensuring the readiness of PHCs to smooth the implementation of the NP role.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Healthcare Sciences
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	28 April 2025
Last Modified:	29 Apr 2025 11:56
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/177936

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