Nurse practitioners 


General information

Nurse practitioners are expert nurses who work within a specific area of practice incorporating advanced knowledge and skills. They practise both independently and in collaboration with other health care professionals to promote health, prevent disease and to diagnose, assess and manage peoples’ health needs. They provide a wide range of assessment and treatment interventions, including differential diagnoses, ordering, conducting and interpreting diagnostic and laboratory tests and administering therapies for the management of potential and actual health needs. They work in partnership with individuals, families, whanau and communities across a wide range of settings. Nurse practitioners may choose to prescribe medicines within their scope of practice. Nurse practitioners also demonstrate leadership as consultants, educators, managers and researchers and actively participate in professional activities, and in local and national policy development.

For more information on the scope of practice and qualifications for nurse practitioners click here

Click here to access the nurse practitioner application form (PDF 93.5 KB) and here to access the guidelines for applicants (PDF 465 KB). 

You will need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer to read these documents.

Nurse practitioner prescibing

Requirements for education and continuing competence for nurse prescribers were gazetted 10 November and came into force on 8 December 2005. Click here to read the gazette notice. Earlier notices from 2002 and 2005 were repealed and replaced by this notice.

Click here to read the Medicines (Designated Prescriber: Nurse Practitioners) Regulations 2005 and here to read the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Regulations 2005, which contain Schedule 1 and Schedule 1A respectively. These are lists of substances that may be prescribed by nurse practitioners.

For further information about medicines management in New Zealand, please refer to the Pharmac website, which contains the New Zealand Pharmaceutical Schedule.

Approved programmes

The Nursing Council has approved the following clinical masters programmes including the content for nurse prescribing preparation:

  • Auckland University of Technology - Master of Health Science in Advanced Nursing Practice

  • Eastern Institute of Technology - Master of Nursing 

  • Massey University - Master of Nursing

  • Otago Polytechnic - Master of Nursing

  • The University of Auckland - Master of Nursing

  • University of Otago - Christchurch School of Medicine

  • Victoria University of Wellington - Master of Nursing (Clinical)

  • Waikato Institute of Technology - Master of Nursing (Clinical)


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