THE Australian Medical Association has warned that current Pharmacy Board of Australia (PBA) proposals to allow pharmacist prescribing represent a "fundamental undermining" of the national governance framework and process for non-medical health practitioners to apply to prescribe.
A submission by the AMA to the current PBA consultation on pharmacist prescribing (PD 06 Mar) noted the high value the Association places on the professional role of pharmacists working with medical practitioners and patients to ensure medication adherence, improve medication management and provide education about medication safety.
However the AMA submission also highlights "gravely worrying assumptions by the Pharmacy Board," including the proposal to bypass the current nationally agreed process for applications to provide, as well as "the denial that the proposals represent a significant expansion of pharmacists' scope of practice".
The AMA also says the Pharmacy Board fails to acknowledge the impact of the proposals on the broader health workforce, and "challenges the Board's evidence that patients in Australia do not have appropriate access to medicines, and the rationale that a solution to this claimed inadequate access is expanding prescribing rights to non-medical health practitioners".
Allowing the Pharmacy Board's jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction plan would lead to "inconsistent and ad hoc practices," the AMA warned, highlighting impacts on education and training, standards, CPD requirements and patient safety.
"To suggest prescribing of S4 and S8 medicines under supervision or under protocol is already within the scope of pharmacists' practice is false and an insult to medical practitioners," the AMA said.
The Association said it supported models where non-medical health practitioner prescribing occurs in a medically led and delegated team environment, and firmly opposed any prescribing by pharmacists "working in, employed by, or associated with, a retail pharmacy".
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