Pharmacy Daily | Prescribing “out of scope”

GENERAL practitioners hope the Pharmacy Board of Australia will reconsider its plans to support pharmacist prescribing, claiming "burdens on GPs would increase" as a result.

In its submission to the Board, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) was critical of moves to expand pharmacist's scope of practice "beyond their core function of medicine advice and dispensing".

"It appears that the consultation is considering 'how' pharmacists should prescribe, without appropriately considering whether pharmacy prescribing is appropriate at all," the RACGP said.

"We know that many medical professions, and even pharmacists themselves, consider it inappropriate that pharmacists expand their role into prescribing.

"Pharmacists simply do not have the healthcare training required to safely deliver healthcare services.

"Expanding the pharmacist scope of practice to prescribing may result in unusual (and sometimes serious) conditions not being recognised and managed appropriately."

The RACGP submission also flagged concerns about potential medication errors as a result of pharmacist prescribing.

"The changing nature of the pharmacist's role will inevitably affect general practice patients," the college said.

"It is important that discussions regarding the role of pharmacists continue to be undertaken in collaboration with the RACGP."

The RACGP said the extension of pharmacy practice to include prescribing would have an impact on the cost of pharmacists' indemnity insurance, but also raised concerns that GPs' premiums would also increase.

"The RACGP suspects that GPs' premiums would increase as they would be responsible for supervising a prescriber who could increase their own medicolegal risk," the college said.

The RACGP said if any of the proposed models were implemented pharmacists should be mandated to take out a higher level of indemnity cover.