Vic rural doctor shortage highlights need for pharmacists to utilise full scope of practice

The Ballarat report indicates some 200 people may face being turned away from clinics every day due to shortage of doctors.

The Victorian President of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Anthony Tassone, said the situation in Ballarat was dire and reflected a general trend across the nation.

“As reported last year by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, more than more than one million Australians were putting off seeing a doctor in one year because they could not afford it,” he said.

“Add this situation to a shortage of GPs and it is clear there is a crisis – a crisis that pharmacists can help to address.”

Local pharmacist Hugh Millikan, proprietor of the Eureka Medical Centre Pharmacy in Ballarat, said community pharmacies were an important part of the health system that could be playing a bigger role to ensure all Australians were getting access to healthcare.

“We have the skills and training to do a lot more to ease the huge pressure our GP colleagues are facing,” he said.

“Easing this pressure will help deliver better health outcomes for all Australians.

“Quite simply pharmacists need to be able to operate to their full scope of practice and governments in all jurisdictions must act on this as a matter of urgency. Allowing pharmacists to operate to full scope of practice will maximise the benefits for patients by using pharmacists’ expertise in medicines which is already acknowledged by regulatory authorities.

“Already patients are benefitting from pharmacists providing more services under their scope of practice and these include vaccinations, medicine reviews, and a wide range of health screening services – to name just a few. There is so much more can, and should be doing to help patients.

“Full-scope pharmacist services could involve a form of controlled pharmacist supply that would allow access of patients to ongoing treatment of medicines for management of chronic disease or treatment of an acute infection under a validated protocol.”