Registered nurses endorsed to prescribe scheduled medicines in partnership with doctors will remain individually responsible for every prescribing decision they make, regulators have stressed.

A small number of nurses — believed to be fewer than 50 — have now received prescribing endorsement from the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia.

But the numbers are expected to grow rapidly as more registered nurses go through the various training programs now being run at five different universities.

Endorsed nurses are meant to work in “partnership” with a doctor or nurse practitioner, drawing up a prescribing agreement documenting the medications they can prescribe, along with the conditions and indications for which they can prescribe.