英文摘要 |
Regarding the scope of practice of nurse practitioners (NPs), before Jan 1, 2016, the promulgation of the Regulation of Nurse Practitioners Practicing Medicine Intervention under the Supervision of Physician, the only document to define the scope of practice is an administrative directives from Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) that notes NPs can assist physicians to provide the following services: explain patient’s condition, prescribe lab works, order medicines, composes progress notes, and assist in medical procedure. Besides these items mentioned above, whether the NPs can practice some other items or not is questioned. In addition, the way that the administrative directives adopted to define the assisting medicine practice is vague, this makes the scope of practice of nurse practitioners more vague. If the scope of practice is vague, the NPs might easily commit the “Physician without License Crime”. In year 2000, a NP was claimed for the “Physician without License Crime”, because he did endotracheal intubation, withdrew arterial blood, and implemented electrocardiogram. Fortunately, this NP was not prosecuted by the prosecutor, and judge also overruled this case. This paper intends to analyze whether the opinions of prosecutors and judges and the content of administrative directives were appropriate. After the promulgation of the Regulation of Nurse Practitioners Practicing Medicine Intervention under the Supervision of Physician, the scope of practice of nurse practitioners become more clear. This paper intends to analyze the case mentioned above by the application of the new regulation and to discuss whether scope of practice of nurse practitioners become not vague due to the promulgation of the new regulation. Hopefully, this article can inspire health professionals to discuss the issues regarding the scope of practice of nurse practitioners, and make that the scope of practice of nurse practitioners could be defied more reasonably. |