Pharmacy Daily | GPs united against expanding scope

MEDICAL groups have united to condemn moves by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia to ensure pharmacists practice their full scope, as a profit-driven raid.

United General Practice Australia (UGPA), which includes the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, GP Registrars Australia, GP Supervisors Australia and the Rural Doctors Association of Australia (RDAA), accused the Guild of "attempts to bully governments into allowing pharmacists take over the work of doctors".

Led by AMA President, Dr Tony Bartone, the UGPA said its mission was to convince governments to resist the Guild's efforts to "undermine and weaken quality primary care in Australia", following the publication of the Guild's Community Pharmacies: Part of the Solution policy paper (PD 14 Aug).

"The Guild should focus on advocating for its members and for local community pharmacists, not engaging in petty turf wars to increase profits for its pharmacy owner members," Bartone said.

"This proposal by the Pharmacy Guild flies in the face of the safety standards, even as set out in their own guidelines, in relation to the separation of prescribing and dispensing."

RDAA President, Dr Adam Coltzau, accused the Guild of making "dishonest claims" about the lack of GP services in rural Australia.

"There are very few rural towns that have a pharmacy and no doctor," he said.

"We understand that running a profitable business in a rural town can be more challenging than in the city, but expanding the pharmacist role into clinical areas in which they aren't safe to operate is no way to address it.

"It just puts patients at risk".

A Guild spokesperson dismissed the UGPA's comments as an effort to prevent pharmacists working to their full scope.

"The only thing new about this new statement from the doctor groups is the acronym -- UGPA -- and we have to wonder if the sector really needed a new acronym," the spokesperson said.

"As usual, the doctor groups are disrespecting the skills, training and legitimate aspirations of pharmacists, and ignoring the full use of the scope of practice of pharmacists in other comparable countries."