Pharmacy Daily | Full scope of practice call

THE Victorian branch of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia has highlighted a shortage of GPs in Ballarat as another reason for pharmacists to be given the right to "operate to their full scope of practice to relieve pressure on doctors and ensure better health outcomes for patients".

Victorian branch President Anthony Tassone said the situation in Ballarat was dire, and reflected a general trend across the nation.

"As reported last year by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, more than one million Australians were putting off seeing a doctor in one year because they could not afford it," he said.

"Add this situation to a shortage of GPs and it is clear there is a crisis -- a crisis that pharmacists can help to address," Tassone said.

Local pharmacist Hugh Millikan, proprietor of the Eureka Medical Centre Pharmacy in Ballarat, said "Quite simply, pharmacists need to be able to operate to their full scope of practice and governments in all jurisdictions must act on this as a matter of urgency.

"Allowing pharmacists to operate to full scope of practice will maximise the benefits for patients by using pharmacists' expertise in medicines which is already acknowledged by regulatory authorities.

"Already patients are benefitting from pharmacists providing more services under their scope of practice and these include vaccinations, medicine reviews, and a wide range of health screening services -- to name just a few."

Millikan said full-scope pharmacist services could involve a form of controlled pharmacist supply that would allow access of patients to ongoing treatment of medicines for management of chronic disease or treatment of an acute infection under a validated protocol.

He added that pharmacists already have the skills and training to do a lot more to ease the huge pressure on GPs and full utilisation "will deliver better health outcomes for all Australians."