Nurses are on the front lines of pain management, yet in Alabama and eleven other states they are not legally authorized to prescribe any controlled pain medications. In this survey of certified registered nurse practitioners in Alabama, 83 percent of the nurses responding to a question about the connection between prescriptive authority and pain management said that the lack of prescriptive authority for controlled substances delays pain management treatment, and 88 percent of those proffering an opinion about the importance of prescriptive authority said that expanding their prescriptive authority to include those medications would improve patient outcomes.

At the same time, however, many nurses indicated that they are not adequately prepared to prescribe and manage pain medications. Fifty-five percent of the nurses responding to a question about whether they were prepared to make decisions when working under protocols related to controlled substances answered no. And 44 percent of the respondents to a question about the nurse practitioner educational curricula said that they did not feel their education had adequately prepared them for prescribing controlled pain medications.