The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7242 p424
29 March 2003

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Press to be independent prescribers now or risk a long wait, warns Mackie

Professor Clare Mackie is urging the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council to press the Government to include provisions for independent pharmacist prescribing when legislative changes are made to the National Health Service Act in October.

These changes, needed to implement the new contract for general practitioners, may be the only opportunity for the next 10 years to ensure the necessary amendments to allow pharmacists to be independent prescribers, she believes.

Professor Mackie, head of the World Health Organization centre for partnerships in medicines for health at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and a former Council member, spoke at the Society's West Midlands regional conference in Birmingham last weekend.

"It would only need a list of 10 or so medicines, including one or two prescription only medicines to establish the principle," Professor Mackie said. "But if this is not done now, then the chance to become independent prescribers may be lost for a generation."

Her fear is that there is a body of opinion at the Society that wants to wait for supplementary prescribing to bed in before asking for independent prescribing rights. "In many cases there is greater support among the medical profession for independent prescribing by pharmacists than for supplementary prescribing," she said.