The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain organised a Pharmacy consultation at Redwood this evening. Pharmacy 2020: have your say and help shape the profession's future.
A few friends and I attended this small-scale forum which was aimed at obtaining feedback from students with regards to how they (or we) think Pharmacy will be in the next 13 years.
NLT was about 3/4 full, with students from all years represented. Among the speakers for the evening were Mark Donovan - possibly one of the funniest and most interesting external lecturers I've had this year, Mair Davies - principal pharm at Princess Wales Hospital and one or two other Welsh Pharm Board Execs.
Mark kicked off the session with a quote.
“Everything changes, nothing remains without change.” - The Buddha
How profound is this quote huh that I'm actually still trying to make sense of it as I'm blogging...?
Anyway, he talked about the society, and how the profession is changing for the better, with pharmacists having a bigger role to play in healthcare than ever before. The last point was undeniably referring to the recent (must have been over a year now actually) green light from DoH for pharmacists to prescribe.
It is a grey area, prescribing. For us pharmacists. On one hand we have to be careful not to upset the doctors given that they've had sole possession of this right since the dawn of time, and on the other hand, we have to make sure that we're all up to speed in terms of competencies and skills. Also, prescribing for pharmacists, as idealistic as it sounds, does present a limitation in that it's difficult to prescribe without knowing what the diagnosis is. And I'll the first person who would object to pharmacists diagnosing because that lies outside of our realm. We're simply not trained as diagnosticians. Period.
Almost everyone on the floor unanimously opined that pharmacists have the skills, and are the best persons to prescribe. No question. But are there other ways of making prescribing work in favour of us pharmacists, the experts in medicines?
A progressive model was put forward during the consultation.
Doctors diagnose, patients prescribe, technicians dispense.
What do you think?
Oh you laugh. You naysayers laugh and shake your heads in disbelief at such a notion.
10 years ago no one believed pharmacists could prescribe a single drug let alone the entire BNF, sell emergency hormonal contraception over the counter, monitor warfarin levels (blood thinning therapy), run high blood pressure clinics etc. Yet they are all now in full swing, with pharmacists as proprietors, leading the way.
So pray tell me, what is impossible?
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