"The bill is currently dead," said Kim Baraona, an advanced nurse practitioner who had worked to get the bill passed.

As of presstime, the only way the bill could have been resurrected was if sponsors had been able to attach it to another bill that already had passed either the Senate or the House.

This year's battle to get prescriptive authority passed was punctuated by a march and rally by nurse practitioners at the state Capital in February. The event, which drew more than 200 nurses and their supporters, featured speeches in support of the bill by State Sens. Nadine Thomas (D-Ellenwood), Don Balfour (R-Snellville), Tom Price (R-Roswell) and Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor.

Advanced nurse practitioners have fought for the right to write prescriptions for more than eight years. Georgia remains the only state in the nation where nurse practitioners are denied this right.

The nurses have been blocked by opposition from the Medical Association of Georgia (MAG).

Currently, nurse practitioners have the right to call in any prescription, but cannot write that same prescription without a doctor's signature. But nurses argue that if a doctor has not seen the patient, it doesn't make sense for the physician to sign the prescription.

"We just want to increase patient safety," Baraona said. "The only thing the legislation would change, would be that our name would be on the [prescription] bottle, along with the physician's, so that the patient could refer back to who actually saw them and so could the pharmacist.

"In addition, the doctor knows who evaluated the patient."

That information is particularly important in large practices. Baraona practices in Lawrenceville with eight other nurse practitioners and six doctors.

During this legislative session, MAG conceded that nurse practitioners should have the right to write prescriptions, "as long as they said they were simply transcribing a physician's order," Baraona said.

But accepting that concession would not address the needs of advanced nurse practitioners and would give patients a false impression if the nurse practitioner was the one who saw the patient and wrote the prescription, Baraona said.

"This is not a delegated task from a physician — this is still our order," Baraona said. The next step for right-to-write advocates is to start working on next year's campaign.

"This is an election year," Baraona said. "So much of what we do is going to depend on the legislative landscape next year, and that landscape is going to dictate what our moves are.

"It's important for folks to get involved in the election now. Our fight continues."

For information, Baraona urges nurse practitioners to get on the United Advanced Practice list serve (uaprn@bellsouth.net) or contact her at LauraKimb@aol.com.

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