The Business Corporation Law does, however, permit the bylaws to prescribe qualifications for directors, and citing the "business judgment rule," the courts have sustained bylaw amendments adopted by the boards that set forth qualifications for directors.
Within England there are two prescribing qualifications [ 47, 48] of interest in this study: An independent prescribing qualification for nurses (INP) to prescribe, within their scope of practice, any licensed medication including some controlled drugs.
Importantly, those in our sample with more prior experience made greater use of the prescribing qualification and prescribed more frequently than those with lesser experience.
In the UK 'independent prescribing' qualifications allows almost all medicines to be prescribed within the individual's clinical competence and 'community practitioner prescribing' qualification gives only authority over a small limited nurses formulary.
This included 59 (29.7%) of those who reported they had the community practitioner prescribing qualification, 56 (9.5%) of NISPs, 13 (37.1%) of PISPs and three (37.5%) AHPs (including an optometrist).
However, these problems continued to restrict use of the community practitioner prescribing qualification, perhaps reflecting the difficulty of accessing and using electronic patient records in general practice where different IT systems are in place.
Using GLM it was evident that the extent to which safety and clinical governance systems were in place was significantly affected by job title, employer, and care setting, and prescribing qualification.
As part of the government's commitment to a more modern National Health Service (NHS) which allows patients quicker and more efficient access to medicines, prescribing powers have been extended to include not just doctors and dentists but also nurses who have undertaken a post-registration prescribing qualification [ 1].
Using ANOVA it was evident that the number of items prescribed using independent prescribing was affected by the prescribing qualification.
