General medical practitioners are currently considering a British Medical Association paper which suggests, among other things, that pharmacists might take over completely the prescribing of all non-prescription medicines, that more prescription medicines should become P medicines more quickly and the reopening of discussions with pharmacists in repeat and interval prescribing.
The suggestions are made in the context of a discussion paper designed to generate debate leading to the formation of future BMA policy.
The discussion paper raises the question of whether GPs should prescribe medicines that are available over the counter. It says that at least 30 per cent of a GP's time is taken up with self-limiting conditions that can be self-treated and asks whether family doctors want this workload and responsibility transferred to pharmacies.
On pharmacy medicines, the paper records that a subcommittee of the BMA's General Practice Committee (GPC) felt that there was room for more prescription medicines to become pharmacy medicines and that this could take place more quickly. The question it poses is whether the current initiative on emergency contraception should be seen as a first step towards a wider pharmacy supply initiative.
The paper records that repeat prescribing accounts for 75 per cent of all prescribing and that large amounts of medicines are inappropriate repeated. It asks whether the GPC should try to introduce this topic to the Government's drive to modernise the NHS and whether discussions, presumably to pass on some of the workload, should begin with pharmacists
The discussion paper "The future of prescribing" can be found on the internet at web.bma.org.uk/gpc.nsf/guidancevw under the "general guidance" section.