Hard for pharmacists without PCT support to become prescribers
Pharmacists with a portfolio career who want to train as supplementary prescribers will have to persuade university course organisers that they have a genuine professional need to take on the new role.
They will also require the support of a primary care trust in England
because they will need an approved prescribing budget and access to supplies
of prescription pads once they qualify.
The majority of supplementary prescriber training places for pharmacists,
currently available at eight universities, are being funded by local
workforce development confederations (WDCs) which are working closely
with primary care trusts to decide which candidates are sponsored.
However, Dr Peter Wilson, consultant to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
involved in developing continuing professional development and supplementary
prescribing, confirmed it was open to independent pharmacists to apply
directly to the university for a place.
But he added: “My advice however to portfolio pharmacists is that
they need to go through a PCT because once you qualify as a supplementary
prescriber you will have a job to do and will need that recognition from
a PCT.
“Although it is not essential to go through the PCT you would have
to convince the university if you wanted to enroll on a course that you
had a professional role to develop — that you weren’t just
getting the qualification for the sake of it.
“One of the reasons the Society is pressing this point, along with
the DoH, is that we want training to focus on the people who will make
a
contribution to health care when they qualify.
“We wanted to learn from the lessons of nurse prescribing, when
they pushed through as many nurses as they could but thousands of them
have never
prescribed in practice, so it was a waste of money and time.”
Primary care pharmacist Andrew Burr, a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society Council, has enrolled as an independent pharmacist onto the training
course at Keele University at a personal cost of £1,800.
He was concerned that if pharmacists who were sponsored by the WCD had
to work closely with a PCT it could stifle innovation. He said: “These
pharmacists will have to work within the dictat of a PCT. I hope that
if you are accredited and you have an innovative service that you will
have the freedom to move that forward.”
Dr Wilson rejected Mr Burr’s fears claiming that the first recruits
to supplementary prescribing courses were often already innovators.
“Many of them, particularly those from the hospital sector, are
already involved in some sort of prescribing process,” he said.
The government wants 4,000 pharmacists to be supplementary prescribers
by the end of 2004. There are already eight training courses up and running
with another five expected to be accredited by the end of December.
|
