RACGP quits Qld trial

CONCERNS over pharmacists misdiagnosing patients are behind the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Queensland Branch’s decision, to abandon its role in the states pharmacy prescribing trial advisory group.

As part of the trial, pharmacists who have signed up to take part will be able to prescribe antibiotics for urinary tract infections (UTIs) and oral contraceptives.

RACGP Queensland Chair, Dr Bruce Willett, cited flaws in the monitoring of misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis and the potential for increase antibiotic resistance, as the reasons for the group’s withdrawal, the College’s newsGP website reported.

“As overseas experience has demonstrated, pharmacist-initiated antibiotics reduce neither health system costs nor GP workloads,” Willett and RACGP Queensland council member, Dr Paul Bryan, said in a letter sent to the head of the trial.

“We believe [the trial] represents an unacceptable departure from current medication scheduling arrangements conducted by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), and carries risks in the form of fragmentation of care, misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis, antibiotic resistance, financial costs to patients, and opportunity costs in the form of missed preventive care.”

Willett and Bryan noted UK pharmacist indemnity insurance provider, Pharmacists’ Defence Association, had issued a warning about a number of serious medical incidents linked to pharmacists prescribing.

The RACGP’s withdrawal from the trial followed the Australian Medical Association’s call for the State’s parliamentarians to push for the trial to be cancelled (PD 31 Jan).