Nurses prescribe appropriately and in comparable ways to physicians. Yet the legal, educational and organisational conditions under which nurses prescribe medicines vary considerably across countries, from countries where nurses prescribe independently to countries in which prescribing by nurses is only allowed under strict conditions and the supervision of physicians. In the Netherlands, categories of specialised registered nurses have limited legal prescribing rights, while nurse specialists have more extensive prescribing rights. On the work floor, there is great diversity in the extent to which and way in which nurse specialists’ legal prescriptive authority has been implemented. Because of the prescribing protocols and formal and informal agreements in place, the jurisdiction that Dutch nurse specialists have on the work floor over prescribing is often much more limited than their legal prescriptive authority.