"Pharmacists to be independent prescribers within six months

Pharmacists could become independent prescribers by January 2007 under RPSGB plans to fast track supplementary prescribers to the qualification.

A conversion course will be introduced while the full independent prescribing course is being developed, RPSGB Council has ruled. The qualification will involve supplementary prescribers taking four extra study days including two days of practice-based learning.

(DotPharmacy.com - 10/8/06)

[To prescribe properly entails an ability to diagnose correctly and a thorough knowledge of medicine in all its facets - unless you are a chemist who will shortly be permitted to prescribe any drug from the entire British Pharmacopeia - Ed]

You're a pharmacist? Well, then...

Don't trouble yourself with 5 years of medical school education and around ten of post-graduate education - become a doctor in just 4 days.

Forget - no, just don't bother learning - general medicine and all its branches - be a doctor in 4 days.

Surgery?  Don't trouble yourself - be a doctor in 4 days.

Psychiatry, dermatology, diabetology, , immunology, oncology and the rest?   It's all balony.  You can be a doctor in 4 days without them.

Diagnosis?  Pah! why bother,  Who cares when you can be a doctor in 4 days?

Investigations?   Hah!  Leave them to Sherlock Holmes.  You can be a doctor in 4 days

You run a shop?   Well, in 4 days you can be a doctor.

Patients?   Who cares when you can be a doctor in 4 days?

You believed doctors should prescribe and chemists dispense?   Tut.  Don't be so old fashioned.  Be a doctor in 4 days.

Fed up with dispensing?  Of course you are.  Be a doctor in 4 days.

Like to be flattered by the government?  Then let them make you a doctor in 4 days.

Think all you need to be a doctor is to be able to prescribe?    If so, then you, too, can be a doctor in 4 days.

Not worried about being sued by patients - or harming more?   Then become a doctor in 4 days.

Not bothered about sleeping nights without worrying?  Then be a doctor in 4 days.

Feeling a little bit self-important?   Then be a doctor in 4 days.

Lacking in self-esteem?    Become a new you by being a doctor in 4 days.

Think all doctors are ignorant twits?   Of course you do.  It only takes 4 days to become a doctor.

Pharmacy a bit beneath you nowadays?   Then come along, be a doctor in 4 days.

Ever thought that if you reject pharmacy to be a doctor in 4 days somebody will become a chemist in 2 days?

DON'T WAIT!!!   The Pharmaceutical Council says you, too, can be a doctor when you become an independent prescriber - it takes just 4 days.  Diagnosis, investigations and fifteen years knowledge and experience previously needed to train stupid, old fashioned GPs, none of these are needed now.

All you need is to be a bored, dissatisfied chemist and you could be rubbing your hands as you approach your first innocent, ignorant patient in just 4 days.

Go on!  Become a doctor in just 4 days.

David Roberts

(12/8/06)