The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7248 p648
10 May 2003

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Letters to the Editor

Extended roles

Let us not get carried away

From Mr P. Jenkins, FRPharmS

Medicines management and prescribing are being promoted as the new disciplines that pharmacists have to master to develop the profession. There is indeed a lot of potential in both, just as there is in the various specialties already embraced by some pharmacists, especially in the hospital service. But we must be sure that they are developed as additions rather than replacements to any part of our core role. This role can be defined in various ways but in essence it is to be suppliers, advisers and counsellors to the public and other professions on medicines, both dispensed and sold.

Certainly we should delegate some basic tasks to properly trained and supervised technicians and drug counter assistants but we loosen our controlling hold on our core role at our peril, for it gives us an independence from which we get recognition, respect and revenue.

We already successfully counter prescribe non-POM products and this should be encouraged in future within the National Health Service. We would officially be taking some strain from general practitioners by treating minor ailments and we would strengthen our position in the health care family.

Managing courses of treatment and even initiating them may be the basis of local pharmaceutical services, but while we should follow up and master these new roles, at the same time we must not relax our hold on our existing skills — there are already others who would like to take over our work. Doctors, nurses and dispensing technicians are all anxious to expand, and good luck to them but not at our expense, please.

Like other pharmacists I want the profession to develop and flourish but let us plan our joint futures properly and not get carried away. If we do, there is a real danger that we will end up not as a profession allied to medicine, but rather working for doctors and having no separate identity of our own.

Peter Jenkins
Cardiff

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