Agreements with GPs could be the safe alternative to independent prescribing by pharmacists
The current dispute is an old turf war dressed up as a concern for patient safety, argues Professor Stephen Duckett.
Roles of health professionals are still unfortunately often stuck in the past.
That is, before the shift of education of nurses and other health professionals into universities in the 1980s. So many are still not working to their full scope of practice.
There has been some expansion of roles in recent years — including pharmacists prescribing (under limited circumstances) and administering a wider range of vaccinations.
But the second paper released by independent Commonwealth review on scope of practice identifies the myriad of barriers preventing Australians from fully benefiting from health professionals’ skills.
