The Federal Government’s Scope of Practice Review is pushing a wrongheaded idea that pharmacists and nurses will protect GPs from burnout by taking over the “easy work”, the AMA says.

As the review prepares to suggest policy changes, the AMA has published its response to the review’s first phase, which says the non-medical lobby groups are pushing for “expanded scope to work in isolation with access to prescribing”.

“Much of the feedback from these groups — and from the reviewers too — outlines how they want to ease the burden on general practice by taking the ‘easy work’ performed by GPs, allowing them to focus on more complex care,” the AMA says.

“The reality is that GPs are already performing much more complex care than they were even a decade ago.”