UK pharmacists’ role to expand

UK proposals mean that patients could be treated for minor ailments in their local pharmacies and could even be screened there for sexually-transmitted diseases.
Pharmacists look set to have an increased role in patient care in England, as the UK Government has announced plans to extend the role of pharmacies there in dealing with minor illnesses. It plans to allow pharmacists to prescribe for such conditions, affording the patient more convenience and what might often amount to faster treatment.

A government White Paper – ‘Building on Strengths, Delivering the Future’ — details how pharmacists will complement the work of GPs in promoting health, preventing sickness and providing care for patients that is “more personal and responsive to individual needs”.
UK Health Minister Ben Bradshaw stressed that the proposals are not about pharmacists taking over the work of GPs: “It’s about complementing them, taking pressure off GPs and enabling them to spend more time with those patients who really need it.”
h4. 52 million prescriptions
It was reported in January by the Proprietary Association of Great Britain that minor ailments make up 18 per cent to 20 per cent of GP workload. This costs the UK’s National Health Service around stg£2 billion per year. Some 57 million GP consultations annually are for minor ailments, taking up over an hour of each doctor’s time every day and resulting in around 52 million prescriptions.
Under the White Paper proposals, pharmacies will be able to prescribe certain common medicines and be the first port of call for minor ailments, freeing up both GPs’ and patients’ time. Pharmacies will also provide support for people with long-term medical conditions – 50 per cent of whom may not take their medicines properly, says the White Paper.
It is also intended that pharmacies will screen for vascular disease and certain sexually-transmitted infections.
The proposals want to see pharmacies becoming what the White Paper calls “healthy living centres” for patients, promoting health, helping people to take better care of themselves and working more closely with hospitals to provide safe, seamless care.
“As 99 per cent of the population can get to a pharmacy within 20 minutes, everyone will benefit from more types of treatment available through local pharmacies who can prescribe more, advise more and deal with more,” said Minister Bradshaw.
h4. Significant impact
The proposals have been welcomed by the Company Chemists Association. “There are times where pharmacists have been shown to have a significant impact on health outcomes by responding to patients’ questions about their medicines and helping them understand how the medicine will improve their symptoms,” said Chief Executive, Rob Darracott.
But some GP representatives have been more cautious. Professor Steve Field, President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: “Pharmacists are not doctors, and patients need to understand the difference.”
Prof. Field claimed that involving pharmacists in preventative healthcare and screening would actually make GPs busier, as they will be identifying more patients who might otherwise slip through the net.
He also cautioned that because pharmacies are businesses, the issue of profit should not “pollute the conversation and there should be no conflict of interest between pharmacists giving advice and their selling particular types of medication”.
Dr Laurence Buckman, Chairman of the British Medical Association GPs Committee, said the proposals were “helpful”, in general. “We believe the overall management of patients with long-term conditions is best done within general practice, but pharmacists have a role to play in supporting patients in their use of medicines,” he said.