Updated: 24/05/2005

Supplementary prescribing guidance updated for additional professions

The Department of Health (DH) guide to implementing supplementary prescribing has been updated following changes in the regulations to allow supplementary prescribing by chiropodists/podiatrists, radiographers and physiotherapists (download updated guide here; see news items here).
 

Pharmacy bodies back full prescribing option

Trained community pharmacists should be able to prescribe any medicine for any condition, according to three bodies representing community pharmacies. Option 5 of the consultation on independent prescribing by pharmacists (see here for news item) will be backed by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC), the National Pharmaceutical Association (NPA) and the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) in their responses to the consultation.

They all agree that professional competence, the code of ethics and clinical governance, rather than legislation, should determine the framework within which pharmacists prescribe. They all believe that community pharmacists need access to patient records. The PSNC’s head of Pharmacy Practice, Barbara Parsons, said that, “Experience from nurse prescribing has shown that formularies are too restrictive and there is a need for pharmacy to learn from and act on this experience”.

The NPA proposes that there should be a standard set of competencies to “inform the development of training programmes for independent prescribers” and also that all independent prescribers, including GPs, should have to follow new national competency frameworks for the treatment of all conditions.

The CCA proposes that there should be a national framework of peer support and review systems for all non-medical prescribers, including those outside the NHS, funded through workforce development confederations.


 

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