From the Department of Health web-site March 2007 with author's comment following.

The Non-Medical Prescribing Programme

The non-medical prescribing programme gives patients quicker access to medicines, improves access to services and makes better use of nurses’ and other health professionals’ skills.

New ! First Pharmacist Independent Prescribers qualify

Following the introduction of independent prescribing by pharmacists in May 2006, the first members of that profession have completed the necessary training and registration. They are now able to prescribe independently within their areas of competence.

_________________

COMMENT

One of the most stupid and dangerous pieces of legislation has now been unleashed on an unsuspecting British public, the right of non-medically trained personnel to prescribe from the full British Pharmacopoeia.   The amazingly incompetent Mrs Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health has plainly not thought through her actions to the logical conclusion but that will come as no suprise to many of her detractors - and there are many.

To prescribe for any condition the prescriber needs the skills to diagnose and no High Street chemist to my knowledge has spent the necessary 5 years at medical school followed by an expanding number of years of post-graduate clinical education.   Any High Street chemist who has chosen to abandon pharmacy and go through a medical education will, quite rightly, be calling himself "doctor" and will, again, quite rightly be prescribing from the full pharmacopoeia.

However, Mrs Hewitt seems to believe that a four week course, supervised by another chemist, equates to 10-15 years of medical training.  It does not and the public would be well advised to believe that.   All it does is to dumb-down medicine and put patients in mortal danger.  Never mind, Mrs Hewitt feels good, "patients will have quicker access to medicines".  Medicines which, in the wrong hands, may kill or greatly harm patients

You know, I have recently come back from Egypt and I noticed that all the transit lounges were over-full of potential travellers.  It occurs to me, following Hewittian logic, that if the cabin attendants had a four week flying course, travellers would have quicker access to aeroplanes.  Perhaps she would like to pass that suggestion on to her Transport colleague.

But, steady on, I hear you say, chemists will only be able to prescribe "for any medical condition within their competence", so who decides their competence?  Well, they do when they undergo their massive 4-week training course.   Even of you do believe that 4 weeks does equate to a GP training period of 10 years, remember that the chemist will have become "competent" in one, very narrow field but he will have the right to prescribe from the whole pharmacopeia or drug list.   To put it another way, he would have access to a whole armoury of loaded guns to use if he feels competent one bright Monday morning.   And, of course, he may be using one on you.

But, as I say, Mrs Hewitt and her spinners are busy duping the public that it is a good thing.  It is not.

Finally, even the chemists once thought that only doctors  were competent enough to prescribe and they to dispense medicines.  There was a maxim to that effect, commonly bandied around by chemists usually when a doctor applied to dispense to his patients;

"Doctors should prescribe and chemists dispense, each according to their own special areas of training".

Apart from the conceit and delusions of grandeur of the Pharmaceutical Society, aided and abetted by the flattery of New Labour nothing has changed.  

Chemists also used to believe that "prescribing and dispensing should never be in the  same hands" for fear of "prescribing to line their pockets".  Another missile aimed at dispensing by doctors.   However, the flattery of government will set the tills rattling vigorously now the chemist is allowed to prescribe, so that holier-than-thou maxim has also been quietly dropped.

You may think that to be hypocritical.   I could not do other than agree.

So, dear patient, if I were you I wouldn't let a prescribing chemist within a hundred miles of my health care.   They are just another half-baked New Labour wheeze and just as well thought out as many another Bliar back-of-an-envelope scheme.

Only this one has the potential to harm.

David Roberts

(28/3/07)