One semester at med school equal to five years of pharmacy training, says pharmacist-turned-GP
Dr Peter Cheng says he didn't realise how little he knew of the art of medicine when he was a pharmacist
“What I knew as a pharmacist of clinical medicine in a total of five years of tertiary education was the equivalent of learning a semester of clinical medicine in medical school.”
This is the view of Dr Peter Cheng.
As a former pharmacist who decided to train as a GP, he is in a rare position to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of pharmacist prescribing amid the claims and counter-claims.
On Tuesday, The Sydney Morning Herald published his response to an opinion article penned by infectious diseases specialist Professor Nick Coatsworth which outlined why, in line with the new thinking by state governments across Australia, pharmacists were “well equipped” to diagnose and prescribe.
