Hospital Pharmacist
2006;13:310
October 2006

News summary

Less than half of registered supplementary prescribers are using skills, research says

Less than half of hospital pharmacists who have registered as supplementary prescribers are carrying out prescribing activities, according to a recent study published in the The Annals of Pharmacotherapy (2006;40:1843–50).

Researchers from The Robert Gordon University, the University of Aberdeen and NHS Education for Scotland sent surveys to all (518) pharmacists who were registered as prescribers as of June 2005. Of the 160 hospital pharmacists who responded, 46.3 per cent had practised as a supplementary prescriber since qualifying. For all pharmacists (ie, regardless of employment sector), the corresponding figures were 401 and 48.6 per cent.

Further analysis by employment sector was not presented in the paper but Derek Stewart, senior lecturer in pharmacy at The Robert Gordon University and one of the paper’s authors, told Hospital Pharmacist that the main reasons given by hospital pharmacists who were qualified as prescribers for not practising prescribing were that his or her organisation did not recognise supplementary prescribing (26 respondents), staff shortages (12 respondents) and lack of time to devote to supplementary prescribing (11 respondents). Other reasons cited included recently changing jobs, supplementary prescribing not being applicable to his or her (sometimes new) role, difficulties with clinical management plans, being on maternity leave and waiting for the rest of the team to finish their training.

The biggest perceived benefit of prescribing was better patient management, with job satisfaction, better recognition and greater independence also being cited. Hospital pharmacists’ median confidence score when writing their first prescription was “4” (in a range of 1 to 5), the same as for pharmacists as a whole. Cytotoxic agents, antiretroviral drugs, antiemetics and anticoagulants were the most commonly prescribed items on a first prescription.

Dr Stewart added that he does not think that the percentage of pharmacists registered as prescribers who are practising this activity will have changed much since June 2005. “Independent prescribing may assist some …”, he said, “as this will reduce some of the paperwork associated with a clinical management plan for every patient.”