Doctors and chemists go to ‘war’ over prescribing rights

Allowing pharmacists to prescribe low-risk medicines is convenient for patients but doctors argue it’s “outright dangerous”.

Excusive: A bitter turf war between doctors and chemists is raging over attempts by pharmacists to gain the right to prescribe medications for their customers.

Doctors fear a trial in Queensland where pharmacists have been allowed to issue antibiotics for urinary tract infections (UTI) could result in pharmacy prescribing becoming available nationally.

A recent survey conducted by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) found it has resulted in 240 patient complications.

Doctors claim cancers, pregnancies, a ruptured ovarian cyst and sexually transmitted diseases weren’t picked up and in some cases the UTI was resistant to the antibiotics and patients ended up in hospital.

But the Queensland Pharmacy Guild said the trial kept 999 women out of hospital emergency departments and helped thousands of women get speedy relief for a painful health condition.

A survey, commissioned by the Guild, showed three in four people support pharmacy prescribing.

The Queensland Government is currently considering an evaluation of the program before it decides whether to extend it beyond June 30.

Pharmacists want to be able to prescribe low risk medicines. Picture: News Regional media.

The evaluation, by the Queensland University of Technology, concluded: “overall, both patients and pharmacists reported that the (trial) was of significant value because of improved accessibility and convenience”.

The same state government is poised to commence a new trial that would see chemists in Far North Queensland undergo extra training before being able to prescribe medications for around 23 other conditions including ear infections, heart failure and asthma.

Pharmacy prescribing has been allowed in the UK since 2003, it is permitted in Canada and New Zealand and it is argued it would help Australian patients in areas where access to a GP is difficult.

However, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) president Dr Karen Price said pharmacists prescribing overseas often had PHD’s and the model could break general practice.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Karen Price. Picture: Supplied

Queensland Pharmacy Guild branch director Gerard Benedet said the program had been “a great success”.

“It’s treated 1000s of women”, and he said other states should consider introducing it,” he said.

The Queensland AMA opposes the trial on patient safety grounds.

“Expanding this to serious conditions like asthma, diabetes and COPD is outright dangerous,” AMA Queensland director Dr Maria Boulton said.

And she warned there was a conflict of interest in allowing the same person to prescribe and sell medications, given there is a financial incentive.

Mr Benedet said this was “an outrageous slur on the pharmacy profession, because a specialist who recommends a procedure has a conflict if you apply that logic, and no one calls into question those professions”.

Federal AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid accused the Queensland Government of going to “war” with general practitioners through the program and said the evaluation was inadequate because it consulted just one third of the patients taking part.

Dr Price said if access to GPs was a problem putting in someone who was less well trained was not the solution and was no different to allowing machines to dispense prescriptions.

“People do think it’s a simple thing to go in and list off a string of symptoms, but your doctor is sitting there with about 10 different conditions that they ticking off in their head while they’re consulting with you that pharmacists are not trained in,” Dr Price said.

“I’m very concerned that the politicians have been poorly advised or lobbied on this and you know, it may seem tantalising of course, a good simple and wrong solution is often very palatable because politicians have a short election cycle,” she said.