{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.016666666666666666, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00641025641025641, 'mean_word_length': 5.349593495934959, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Should nurses prescribe?

Patricia Hewitt's announcement1 that doctors' unique privilege to prescribe from the entire formulary will in future be usurped by nurses and pharmacists, subject to checks on professional competence, have understandably raised the hackles of doctors who see this as yet another attack on their professional status.

This, however, is more than a clinical version of a 1960-style demarcation dispute; it is a manifestation of a view prevailing among ministers and their advisers that GPs are intellectually inferior to their consultant colleagues and that their clinical and diagnostic skill can be fulfilled by other primary care team colleagues with less training, working to protocols. This is an attitude that forgets that the diagnostic process is …