Emergency measures need reform

PHARMACISTS need greater freedom to initiate treatment in emergency scenarios, a pharmacist who works in the aged care sector believes.

Having spent a number of days with more than 50 residents and evacuees from other homes at the IRT aged care facility in Moruya, NSW, as bushfires threatened the region, pharmacist, Jo McMahon, told Pharmacy Daily that there was a need for embedded pharmacists to be allowed to provide certain medications.

McMahon said the town’s pharmacies were forced to close when the electricity went down, resulting in limited access to medicines and medical support as the fires approached.

However, she was able to get medication for some residents from the local hospital.

“After this experience I think pharmacists should be able to initiate some medications in a situation like that,” she said.

“Things like Ventolin, because people couldn’t breathe properly, and were coughing and wheezing.

“If I’d been out in the community in a pharmacy I could have, overthe-counter, provided that to someone, but as an embedded pharmacist with residents that I knew, I had their medication charts and I had their diagnosis, I didn’t actually have the ability to give them chloramphenicol eye drops or Ventolin.”

With road closures preventing several staff members from accessing the town, McMahon volunteered to assist with the care of the facility’s 30 residents, with patient numbers swelling as 20 residents from IRT’s home in Dalmeny temporarily moved to Moruya, due to the fire threat.

At the peak of the emergency, McMahon said residents were forced out of their rooms for up to two days and two nights, sleeping in chairs and unable to go outside.

With hazardous air quality lingering for days after the fire threat receded, McMahon said there was a need to ensure facilities have stocks of nicotine replacement products to support smokers in the event of future crises.