THE Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) says the current shortage of trimethoprim across Australia is "yet another reminder of why allowing pharmacists to prescribe medicines, including antibiotics, is such a bad idea".
RACGP President, Dr Nicole Higgins, said the shortage was a much-needed wake-up call, highlighting "why carefully managing antibiotic prescribing is so important and must be left to the experts with proper medical training".
The College's statement is the latest salvo in its staunch opposition to seeing pharmacists practising to their full scope, and links the UTI prescribing pilot in North Queensland as well as similar plans in NSW and Vic to the possibility of greater antimicrobial resistance in the community.
"A shortage of a commonly prescribed antibiotic is much higher stakes in terms of poor clinical outcomes," Higgins said.
"It can actually compound the issue of antimicrobial resistance as GPs are forced to prescribe broader spectrum antibiotics, making the entire problem much worse.
"That is why the judicious use of antibiotics is more important now than ever before.
"Australia needs proper antibiotic stewardship and evidence shows that community pharmacists overprescribe antibiotics," she said.
"GPs are the ones who understand that UTI treatment needs to be done with conservative options, if at all possible, to both conserve antibiotics when they are so hard to access and to prevent antimicrobial resistance.
"When a patient with symptoms of a suspected UTI walks into a pharmacy they will be handed trimethoprim because when your only tool is a hammer, every solution is a nail.
"Pharmacies also have a profit motive because they will be the ones dispensing the very antibiotic they themselves have just prescribed," Higgins claimed.
"So, what you will see across Australia under these pharmacy prescribing schemes is an explosion in antibiotic prescribing at a time when we are trying to combat one of the great public health challenges of this century in antimicrobial resistance."
The RACGP President urged immediate action to "stand up to the Pharmacy Guild and stop these pharmacy prescribing powers before it is too late...the trimethoprim shortage highlights just how important it is we get this right and act without delay".
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