Pictured: Wendy Hartwig
A Shrewsbury woman is celebrating after studying for nine months
at De Montford University, Leicester, and passing exams which in
one instance required 100% marks.
Wendy Hartwig, a Nurse Practitioner at The Skin Clinic based at
The Dental Spa on Oxon Business Park, has become one of the first
aesthetic nurses in the region to also qualify as an independent
nurse prescriber.
Wendy, who has been in the aesthetics industry for ten years,
opted for the prescriber training when The Skin Clinic wanted to
make injectable cosmetic medicinal treatments available on an
everyday basis to meet demand. Prior to qualifying as a nurse
prescriber she administered various laser and light based
therapies.
Earlier this year the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)
clamped down on this type of treatment after becoming aware of
clinics that were allowing nurses to take prescriptions remotely,
often by telephone, from doctors who had not seen the patient. A
directive was issued advising that prescriptions for medicinal
products such as botulinum toxin (Botox®) could only be written
by someone who had carried out a first hand assessment of the
patient at a consultation.
"Products such as Botox® are prescription only medications,"
explains Wendy. "So when The Skin Clinic needed to meet demand for
this type of treatment I agreed to train as a prescriber to enable
them to take a Gold Standard route to offering the service. This
required me to qualify as a general prescriber, not just as a
prescriber of one specific drug.
"The training involved attending lectures, doing two written
exams requiring 100% and 80% pass marks respectively, producing a
large portfolio of work and shadowing qualified prescribers and a
GP. It was hard, but it was worth it as I can now provide
continuity by carrying out consultations, writing the prescription
for the medication and administering it. More importantly I will be
doing it within the law."