By Gerard Benedet - Guild Executive Director
While it's often said that death and taxes are life's only certainties, I’d argue there's another inevitability: when someone is running for an elected position in a medical lobby group, they frequently and predictably resort to attacking the scope of practice of other healthcare professionals, in particular Community Pharmacists, using fear as their primary weapon.
I wonder how attacking others fixes the known problems in their own profession? Attacking Community Pharmacists must be an attractive political wedge issue aimed at medical professionals voting in lobby group elections, otherwise why else would you do it? It’s clearly naked internal politics at its worst.
As you might imagine, in my role, I’ve heard just about every chicken little argument around. However, they’re predictable and usually go something like this, “if pharmacists are allowed to (fill in the blank here) patients will be put at risk” or “if doctors aren’t in control - (add in the unfounded and farfetched patient misadventure)”.
This unfounded fearmongering about Community Pharmacist’s training to administer vaccinations first arose in 2014. We’ve recently hit new heights. Attacking Community Pharmacists now features in all election candidate manifestos across the different medical lobby groups.
Maybe Community Pharmacists should be flattered by the constant talk. I’d offer that the talk takes up column inches and energy which would be better devoted to providing their own professions with a ‘light on the hill’ strategy for the future, to use a famous phrase.
Community Pharmacists want to see all healthcare professionals thrive, especially GPs - there is more than enough work for everyone.
Given the constant focus on Community Pharmacists, one could reasonably conclude that all the patients problems with cost and access to a GP, specialist or other healthcare professional are solved: that the GP shortage has been filled and Australia’s finally found a way out of pinching thousands and thousands of doctors from around the world and instead is producing an ever-increasing number of home-grown doctors.
This would be wonderful to hear and experience – but alas!
At any time, we are more than happy to sit down, talk, swap ideas and work together to build a better health system, with patient directed care at its heart. It’s an open invitation.
Gerard Benedet - Guild Executive Director
Sadly, as night follows day, there will be more criticism of Community Pharmacists wanting to do more to help patients, to solve known issues in our health system, to go back to school and do additional training and to catch up with their international counterparts who have been working to full scope for many years. It just seems to be the norm from the medical lobby.
Despite the rhetoric, for many years we’ve seen a fuller scope of practice for Community Pharmacists in England, Wales, Canada, and New Zealand. Time after time, these full scope services have been evaluated and found to have positive health outcomes for patients, taken pressure of GPs, reduced unnecessary hospital presentations and exceeded patient need.
Against this no-plan-for-the-future backdrop, we know fewer medical graduates are choosing general practice. This is compounded by the fact that in 2023, there were 4503 fewer GPs practising in Australia than in 2019. In this same time the Australian population has grown by about 1.4 million people.
In contrast, the number of Community Pharmacists is growing year on year.
Community Pharmacies are the most frequently accessed and most accessible health destination, with over 443.6 million individual patients visits annually and 2,127 pharmacies open after-hours, including weekends.
There are over 5,900 Community Pharmacies in Australia, and the average person visits a Community Pharmacy 18 times a year in metropolitan, rural, and remote locations.
Community Pharmacies are also highly accessible. In capital cities, 96 per cent of people have access to at least one pharmacy within a 2.5 km radius, while in the rest of Australia, 74 per cent of people are within 2.5 km of a pharmacy.
As patients would expect, on the frontline, Community Pharmacists work constructively with GPs on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, as we’re seeing in this current medical lobby election season, this practical support on the front line doesn’t translate through to the rhetoric of the various candidate’s political agendas, much less a focus on patients.
At any time, we are more than happy to sit down, talk, swap ideas and work together to build a better health system, with patient directed care at its heart. It’s an open invitation.
This article was originally published as “’We’ve heard every Chicken Little argument around’: Pharmacy Guild’s message to GP leaders” in AusDoc on 28 August 2024. The original article is available by subscription at AusDoc.
