Pharmacy Daily | Expanding scope a sensible solution

PHARMACIST prescribing is one of the only realistic ways of boosting access to healthcare available to State governments, former Federal Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, believes.

In an editorial published in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, Coatsworth backed pharmacists to take on the tasks of diagnosing and prescribing safely.

"I've lost count of how many times a pharmacist has saved my bacon (and my patient's health) during my career," he said.

"Those experiences have led me to deeply respect the professional skills of pharmacy colleagues.

"Expanding scope of practice always has significant safety implications and is never something to be taken lightly.

"But it would be wrong to characterise this trial as an attempt by the pharmacy profession to gain ground in a professional turf war.

"On the contrary, it represents one of the only realistic short-term reform pathways to improve access to care in our constrained health system."

Coatsworth added that criticism from the medical profession of pharmacist prescribing pilots in Queensland and NSW, and the Victorian Labor Party's pre-election commitment to conduct a trial, had been a mix of "credible counter-argument and predictable hyperbole".

The former Deputy CMO noted Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), Dr Karen Price's comments that "the art of diagnosis" was a differentiator between GPs and pharmacists.

"But no pharmacist is claiming to be a master of the diagnostic art - and by the way, that mastery is not universally attained by doctors," he said.

"What their prescribing trials are working to is a pharmacist's strengths - highly protocol-driven assessment and treatment of routine conditions in a safe and controlled manner."

Coatsworth also rejected claims that pharmacist prescribing would fuel a rise in antimicrobial resistance, "given the prescribing practice of many doctors".

He said recent data showed that one-in-five antibiotics issued for residential aged care patients were for prophylaxis, "which is outside the recommended guidelines and a known driver for resistance".

"By contrast, pharmacists have been the backbone of successful hospital-based antibiotic prescribing improvements over the past decade," he said.