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To evaluate the diabetes nurse specialist prescribing project with the aim of determining whether diabetes nurse specialist prescribing is safe and effective and to inform the implementation and extension of registered nurse prescribing.

Registered nurses in many countries are able to prescribe medicines, but in New Zealand, prior to the diabetes nurse specialist project, nurse practitioners were the only nurses who could prescribe medicines. New regulations allowed the nurses to prescribe a limited number of prescription medicines.

The study was a process and outcome clinical programme evaluation.

The project took place between April–September 2011 and involved 12 diabetes nurse specialist in four localities. Quantitative data were collected from clinical records maintained by the diabetes nurse specialist for the project (1274 patients and 3402 …