Introduction: Due to the amendment of the Nurse and Midwife professions Act, since 1st of January 2016 Polish nurses and midwives with certain qualifications are able to prescribe medicines and referral for diagnostic tests.
The aim: To analyse attitudes of physicians on new professional competencies of nurses and midwives regarding: prescribing medicines and referring patients for certain diagnostic tests.
Material and methods: In the study took part 436 physicians (245 women, 193 man). The average age was 36,6 years old (min.: 21; max.: 76; SD: 11,65; median: 31). 274 people lived in a city with over 500 thousand citizens, 70 people - city below 100 thousand citizens, 54 people - city between 100-500 thousands citizens and 14 people lived in a country. Most of people lived in masovian district. Authors prepared and validated own questionnaire, which contained statements assessed in Likert scale (1-strongly disagree, 5-stronlgy agree). It contained 22 questions about opinions of new abilities of nurses and midwives. The questionnaire was sent three times to Regional Medical Chamber in Warsaw via an online questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cxiaJFPxDVphByhBTk4gDIBsm6bQsxGLVXDK-RtpGnk/ The reliability of the questionnaire used was tested in a pilot study by the coefficient α-Cronbach, which amounted to 0.937. Due to the fact that the study was performed in a group of doctors they did not require the consent of the Bioethics Committee, of Medical University of Warsaw to carry them out. The results are presented using descriptive statistics, which were obtained through statistical analysis using Microsoft Excel and StatSoft Statistica 12.0 (license Medical University of Warsaw).
Results: 53% of doctors claim that the new powers do not improve patient care. 35% of respondents disagreed with the opinion that the new powers will raise the prestige of professional nurses and midwives. At the same time 49% believe that prescriptions for nurses and midwives reduce the responsibilities of doctors. Only 9% agreed that the new abilities are needed in Poland. 65% of doctors have expressed the opinion that nurses and midwives should not have permission to prescriptions and 81% believe that they are not prepared for those abilities.
Conclusion: Doctors have divided opinion about the benefits of the introduction of the nursing prescriptions for the patient. It is therefore, considered an information campaign through the mass media, or training in the workplace, where they will be presented in an objective manner the consequences of the introduction of new regulations.
Keywords: health personnel; legislation; legislation drug; nursing.