THE Pharmacy Board of Australia has published a report about a forum it hosted earlier this year (PD 02 Jul 2018) to consider the need and opportunities for expanding pharmacist involvement in prescribing.
The Pharmacist Prescribing Forum report, a background paper and two other reports about prescribing commissioned by the Board are available in the Professional practice issues section of the Board's website.
The forum explored the potential expanded role of pharmacists in prescribing in order to contribute to supporting access to medicines in Australia, which aligns with the objectives of the National Scheme, including "to enable the continuous development of a flexible, responsive and sustainable health workforce and to enable innovation in the education of, and service delivery by, health practitioners".
Following the release of the report, the Board is currently preparing a discussion paper to seek the views of the pharmacy profession, other health professionals and the public about the need for and potential models of pharmacist prescribing.
The forum gave generally strong support for enhancing the role of pharmacists to include prescribing, with the proviso that prescribing and dispensing functions should be separated.
Team-based collaborative care was a dominant theme, the report said, and there was strong agreement that additional education and training would be required for autonomous prescribing especially in relation to addressing the competencies required for diagnosis and assessment.
There was also a clear need to create uniformity across states and territories around any regulatory adjustments required.
See pharmacyboard.gov.au.
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