First pharmacist independent prescriber qualifies
 Beth Hird, senior practice pharmacist at Nottinghamshire County Teaching Primary Care Trust, is the first pharmacist in the UK to be awarded a practice certificate in independent prescribing. It was announced
this week that she has successfully completed the independent prescribing
conversion course at the department of medicines management, Keele
University. She will be able to practise as an independent prescriber
once she registers as such with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. The
Society says that, once an application has been received, registration
can usually be achieved within one day.
Mrs Hird believes that independent prescribing is the next natural step,
for both her and for pharmacy as a profession. “It is an exciting
step forward for the profession to take on the professional responsibility
of independent prescribing. It should lead to new roles for pharmacists,
especially with the advent of practice-based commissioning, resulting
in a more patient-focused NHS,” she said. “Personally, I
have built up confidence in prescribing for patients with asthma using
supplementary prescribing and I wanted to move forward into the independent
prescriber role in this area,” she added.
After qualifying as a supplementary prescriber at Keele University in
April 2005, Mrs Hird wrote her first prescription in August 2005 and
currently runs a weekly asthma clinic at a medical practice in Nottingham.
Once registered, Mrs Hird plans to prescribe independently for these
patients and to extend the clinic to include patients with acute exacerbations
and those refered by their GP for a diagnosis. She also plans to take
on statin prescribing within the practice.
The conversion
course at Keele University was accredited last month (PJ,
16 December 2006, p724) and currently has a cohort of 42 students, many
of whom expect to qualify within the next two months. Keele’s practice
certificate requires a minimum of 50 hours of study, including two days
of learning with a doctor and one day of face-to-face training at the
university. A full independent prescribing course will replace the university’s
supplementary prescribing course from September 2007, subject to accreditation
by the university and the Society.
The University of Reading’s conversion course was also approved
by the Society in December 2006 and there are applications in the pipeline
from a further 12 providers, all at varying stages of the approval process.
These include King’s College, London; the Robert Gordon University,
Aberdeen; University of Leeds; University of Sunderland; University of
Bath; University of Strathclyde; University of Brighton; University College,
Chester; University of Wales, Swansea; University of Hertfordshire; Medway
School of Pharmacy, Kent; and Queen’s University, Belfast.
Details of which courses have been accredited are regularly updated
on the Society’s
website
News feature p43
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