PHARMACISTS' role in administering COVID-19 vaccines (COVAX) could pave the way for the expansion of the profession's scope of practice Primary Care Pharmacy Association President and Brentworth Primary Care Network (PCN) Clinical Director, Dr Graham Stretch, believes.
Speaking during a webinar on Tue night, Stretch told Australian pharmacists that they could leverage the "idea that a prescribing professional can be so much more effective in a situation when you have an unlicenced medicine.
"I've fought some battles with the Australian Medical Association around pharmacist prescribing over the years," he said.
"It seems to me this might be an opportunity to demonstrate the fact that being a prescriber would make us much more autonomous, much more able to deliver the scale for my patients and actually any improvement in the profile of pharmacists as autonomous professionals in this way can only help in that respect.
"I despair sometimes - I saw a nurse saying on Twitter about why would pharmacists from their pharmacies be able to do this when all they sell is homeopathy and jellybeans, or some nonsense.
"That's a perception. Yeah we're a retail environment, but we can deliver clinical services the same as anybody else, more conveniently then anybody else and closer to home than anybody else, so actually leverage that if you're going to leverage anything."
Stretch added that the UK is about to start graduating pharmacist prescribers, which he described as "a huge way forward", while acknowledging "it's not without its detractors - even amongst our own profession".
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