What do you think? Do you want the Medicines Use Review (MURs) and New Medicine Service (NMS) to become essential services? There is a view that the government may reduce fee to deliver the services over time if they are. The pharmacies with no consultation room may fall foul of the fitness to practice rules?
Dr Surgery Pharmacist versus the Local Retail Pharmacy, where would the patient prefer to go?
Should pharmacist be decamped into the surgery with the prescribers to see patients with common ailments and repeat medications for long term illnesses? Is this not what pharmacists and their trained team members do all day long at the pharmacy counter or in their consultation rooms?
Do you hold with Andy Burnham who suggested that this could be “Medicines on the cheap” with patients seeing pharmacists when they should be seeing a doctor?
It is curious as this is never suggested when the patients are directed to be seen by the practice or asthma nurse. It bemuses me why are pharmacist still seen as the poorer choice.
Surely if the government really want the best use of pharmacist skills they would be better placed managing the difficult cases not managing stable repeats, coughs and sneezes. The true potential can be achieved by advising on the best choice of medication for the acute symptoms presented and equally or more important patients on complex poly pharmacy or not responding to treatment and suffering conditions which would be best served by a multi-disciplinary review which is the case in secondary care rather than pharmacist dealing with humdrum to free up doctors to manage the difficult cases. If we are to help reduce prescribing errors they are more likely to happen with the people on polypharmacy and on more risky medication.
I am all for pharmacists being part of the surgery team but I do still wonder why surgeries don’t refer the patients to their local pharmacy as we did for years with the “Ask the pharmacist campaign “ If we drive patient to the surgeries to see their pharmacist, we may put another nail in the coffin for the lower turnover independent pharmacy which is only just surviving which will in turn put more pressure on the surgery ?
I truly believe pharmacists should be treated as an equal in the surgery or on their pharmacies, they should have full access to patient records and be able to prescribe for patients as long their ailments are within their areas of expertise.
The pressure on A and E is immense and I truly believe that pharmacists would also be well placed within these multi-disciplinary teams, especially as on many occasions patients present as a result of medication errors.
What pharmacists really need is the confidence to grasp the opportunities being presented, some specialist training, and to develop prescribing skills and a chance to verify their true potential.
Possibly this will help to solve the problem of the oversupply of newly qualified pharmacists and also if the course changes to a five year course with an integrated pre-registration, may result in undergraduates working alongside prescribes and pharmacists in the surgery .