Pharmacy prescribing and three reasons all doctors should add their names to the AusDoc campaign
The concerns about the safety of pharmacy prescribing in the North Queensland trial is too often described as no more than a turf war.
The term suits both the politicians and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. They can dismiss the alarm sounded by doctors without making any intellectual demands on their intended audience.
But in the two weeks since this campaign started, we have tried to unpick the realities, going through line by line the actual clinical protocols developed by Queensland Health to show you the ways they risk harming patients.
Or put another the way, we have tried to make clear the bad medicine embraced by the protocols which have been developed — as far as we know — without any independent medical oversight.
That is the first reason for doctors to add their names to this campaign.
The second reason is simply that the rise of pharmacy prescribing in Queensland and elsewhere is dismantling the rationale for robust medical training in terms of differential diagnoses, effective treatments and safe prescribing.
That along explains why the leaders of the 15 specialist medical colleges in Australia are worried.
The third reason is that it is also an attack on the TGA and the medicine schedule: one of the most important patient safety mechanisms Australia has.
At the time of writing, more than 2000 doctors have signed the AusDoc petition calling for this experiment in medical care to be abandoned.
We are urging medical professionals from all backgrounds and all specialties to add their names.
It is important – the issue touches directly on what it is to be a doctor.
Paul Smith
AusDoc editor
Here is a link to the petition itself. Readers can also share this Bitly link — bit.ly/430GisF — with their colleagues.
