EXPANDING pharmacists' prescribing rights is "not a rural workforce solution", Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Rural Chair, Dr Michael Clements, believes.
Responding to suggestions that the Queensland Health Unleashing the potential: an open and equitable health system report backed pharmacist prescribing, the RACGP said the Pharmacy Guild of Australia's Queensland Branch had "actively mischaracterised the report's findings".
"The only time pharmacy prescribing was mentioned was by a stakeholder saying that they wanted it -- and where the report talked about 'full scope of practice' was for allied health," Clements told the RACGP's newsGP publication.
"I work in remote communities, and I just haven't seen a town that's got a pharmacist sitting there waiting to do consults with no primary care services.
"The pharmacies only open where there's a steady supply of scripts and so they generally only open up where there is already a reasonable primary care service in place."
Clements added that there was no evidence to support assertions made by the Guild that expanded pharmacist prescribing was associated with a reduction in emergency department presentations.
"I'd like to see the evidence for that, as that's not borne out by every other report we've seen from Queensland Health or any other state," he said.
"There just isn't a link between what they're trying to propose and any benefit - there's not even a tenuous link."
While critical of the Guild's push for pharmacist prescribing, Clements said GPs have "always absolutely loved the idea of working with pharmacists... but what the Guild is proposing is a new scope of practice, not a full scope of practice, and there's just no evidence [to support it]".
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