Prescribing safely
Sometimes doctors just do not get pharmacists. The latest example of this appears in the current issue of the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (edited by a doctor), which examines the case for non-medical prescribing and describes the development of supplementary and independent prescribing.
At one stage the bulletin states: “The concerns about non-medical
prescribing are prompted, in part, by the fact that doctors’ prescribing
can be associated with high rates of adverse drug reactions, some of
which might be avoidable.”
To extrapolate from this well-known phenomenon concerning doctors to
encompass pharmacists generally is misleading and reveals the ignorance
of the medical profession. Only pharmacists who have the knowledge and
confidence to prescribe independently will do so.
As many hospital pharmacists will aver, newly qualified junior doctors
are often lousy prescribers. They learn on the job, usually with pharmacy
support, and make many errors that are picked up by pharmacists. Some
GPs are not much better, even after 10 years of practising medicine.
The important points that doctors should know about pharmacists is that
pharmacists know much more about medicines than most doctors. They are
trained to be meticulous; they are naturally cautious and highly unlikely
to stray outside their own comfort zones. As a result, they will only
prescribe when they know what they are doing.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is developing a curriculum that will
cover those areas missing from the undergraduate course. It will better
equip pharmacists to prescribe safely — understanding the limitations
of their own diagnostic skills is one example.
This is not to say that pharmacists never make mistakes themselves but,
when it comes to prescribing, let us hope they do not make them on the
same scale as doctors. It is crucial that the first independent pharmacist
prescribers, once trained, prove once and for all the benefits they can
bring to the health care team and turn those sceptical doctors around.
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Election result brings some surprises
Nobody should be surprised that Dorothy Drury has topped
the poll in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council election. She was the only woman candidate and with women dominating the Register in all but the oldest age groups it is likely that she has been supported by many of the sisterhood.
More surprising is the fact that both candidates from Boots failed to attract
sufficient support, especially since the failure of Digby Emson to be elected
last year brought to an end some 40 years of Boots’s presence on the Council.
However, the fact that Boots fielded two candidates this year out of a total
of eight candidates may have worked against them. Loyal Boots employees would
not have felt obliged to support both. Maybe, as a result, the Boots vote was
split and both lost out.
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