Pharmacist prescribing no way: AMA

PHARMACISTS lack the skills necessary to prescribe medicines, Australian Medical Association (AMA) Western Australia President, Dr Andrew Miller, claims.

Speaking on ABC Radio Perth’s Breakfast show yesterday, Miller said the AMA thinks “pharmacists are great”, but it holds “severe concerns about [pharmacists’] diagnostic capabilities and about prescribing”.

“We have just seen last week a study come out of Queensland and 400 pharmacies which had mystery shoppers, more than half the time they were selling unnecessary things and prescribing unnecessary over-the-counter medicines,” he said.

“We have severe concerns about... [them] prescribing, particularly moving into things like antibiotics or opioid medications.

“This is the reason codeine had to be taken out of pharmacy.”

Miller told the hosts that the recent WA Review of Pharmacy Ownership report, which recommended expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice, was driven by pharmacy business interests and failed to address the medical profession’s concerns.

“Our views in the review were not put forward,” he said.

“We love working with pharmacists, they’re great at managing chronic disease, advising GPs on medicines, they’re great at deprescribing, saying ‘you’ve got a big list of things here in a nursing home, we need to reduce that’.

“And there are lots of nondispensing and employee pharmacists whom we 100% support, and I don’t think they’re wanting to buy into this ‘let’s become GPs writing sick certificates and scripts’.

“I think it’s the big business interests [driving that], and that’s what we’re against.”

Miller added the growing trend of pharmacists working in GP practices to provide medicines reviews and script advice, provided an alternative career path for pharmacists.

“Those pharmacists aren’t conflicted,” he said.

“They’re not making money out of selling you a prescription or all the other stuff.

“There’s lots of stuff that’s being sold to patients in pharmacies that’s worthless in our view.”