RACGP Victoria is calling on patients to stick with their regular GPs amidst a pharmacy prescribing surge.
New moves to promote pharmacist-led prescribing in Victoria have prompted the RACGP to directly appeal to patients.
The latest development in the saga is a new media campaign funded by the state government, which spruiks pharmacist prescribing services.
“We’re urging people to see a GP for a diagnosis because there is no such thing as a ‘simple’ health condition, and pharmacists are not trained to diagnose,” RACGP Victoria chair Dr Anita Munoz said.
“GPs spend over a decade training including practising under supervision for many years to diagnose a myriad of health conditions.
“This program is allowing pharmacists to hand out medicines, including antibiotics, based off checklists and flowcharts after a short online course – this cannot replace a medical diagnosis, and patients accessing these services from chemists need to know that.
“This is a fundamental conflict of interest, we’ve already seen the risks of prioritising profit in the telehealth space, and it is critical that these mistakes are not repeated in the rollout of pharmacy prescribing.”
Expansion of pharmacy prescribing rights is a hot topic in Victoria this year, after a pharmacy pilot was greenlit for permanency by the state government back in May.
This pilot program received an independent review in 2024 that was also criticised by the RACGP for not addressing key concerns with the initiative.
A more recent national push from the Pharmacy Board comes after a health minister request to establish a nationally consistent model for endorsement of pharmacists to prescribe scheduled medicines.
Separation of prescribing and dispensing is the key argument from the RACGP, which said these initiatives are removing a key safeguard when it comes to high-quality patient care.
Reports of significant harm and misdiagnosis from these prescribing initiatives have been so far unaddressed according to Dr Munoz.
“We absolutely have reports of significant harms and misdiagnoses happening in different trials around the country, but they have not been formally captured by the Queensland trial,” Dr Munoz told The Medical Republic.
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“The Victorian trial set the benchmark for recorded harm as being permanent injury or death, and of course, we’re not capturing where these errors are occurring, and that’s leading to proponents of the pharmacy prescribing narrative to say that there’s not been any harm at all.
“I find that very challenging, because members of my college have been reporting to us from the very beginning that they’re observing significant issues with pharmacy prescribing.”
The RACGP has also reiterated its stance on utilising pharmacist skills within a multidisciplinary environment, in alignment with the similar overseas initiatives that the Pharmacy Board has touted as validation for the push.
“We’ve said from the very beginning that the best model for pharmacy prescribing is within the multidisciplinary team environment, working alongside and under the supervision of GPS,” Dr Munoz told TMR.
“We are told over and over again by the pharmacy guild that there is international evidence that pharmacists have prescribed safely overseas for years.
“But in actual fact, in the UK and in New Zealand, which is often what they are referring to, the prescribing occurs in multidisciplinary team environments, environments, not in a retail shop.
“Those distinctions are incredibly important, but they are also being left out of the narrative.”
