There is a developing but still fuzzy quarrel between nurses and doctors over a regime for prescribing medication, which nonetheless is well worth airing.

It is not quite clear what it is that the Nurses Association of Jamaica is demanding, but the association says that the errors in prescribing medication is a matter of concern. "The standard of prescription orders is insufficient and needs to be monitored," Mrs. Edith Allwood-Anderson, the NAJ's president, told this newspaper.

Having tramped our way through the fuzz, we believe that we can reasonably conclude that the NAJ is saying that Jamaican doctors make many mistakes in their prescriptions and that nurses want a role in stopping them. It would be rather like placing nurses, especially in a hospital setting, in a position to review prescriptions of doctors; playing long-stop, as it were.

That, at least, is our interpretation.

Unfortunately, Dr. Alverston Bailey offers not much more clarity. He claims it to be "unjust, unfair and potentially libellous" for anyone to argue that "all errors in prescription writing, dispensing and consumption of drugs rest squarely on the shoulders of doctors".

If we discern correctly the trend, and thread, of Mrs. Allwood-Anderson's argument, her complaint is not with the dispensing and consumption of drugs. The position, she seems to be advancing, is that doctors make too many mistakes in writing prescriptions and they need some kind of oversight and this should be in the purview of nurses, who, after all, "are not subservient to doctors within the medical framework."

It seems to us that Dr. Bailey has muddied the water more than a little bit, by the addition of extraneous issues. For the fact is that doctors are the ones who prescribe the drugs; it is their responsibility.

The real issue to be addressed is whether, as Mrs. Allwood-Anderson seems to imply, those in Jamaica make too many mistakes or are in need of monitoring. If they are in need of monitoring, should nurses be the ones to provide the review?

One obviously missing bit of information in all this, it seems to us, would be data on Jamaican patients who, each year, may be prescribed with the wrong drugs or the wrong dosage of drugs and become ill or die from it. Or, how often is the wrong drug dispensed and/or administered?

We would expect that there is a consistent gathering of such statistics by the health authorities and that these are analysed to determine trends. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, health system managers and patients would have an interest in such information which would also help to influence how we organise arrangements for the delivery of health care.

However, the systematic gathering of such information as a management tool is different from placing nurses in a direct position of oversight of doctors in the process of diagnosis, including the writing of prescriptions.

Obviously, a nurse on the basis of training and experience, may discern a doctor's error. In such cases, it is the nurses' responsibility to bring it to the attention of the doctor, and, in egregious circumstances, report the matter to a higher authority.

Clearly, in the best health care arrangement, there is a partnership between doctor and nurse, but we question this push for an oversight role for nurses, if this is what the NAJ is suggesting.