So, Pharmacists Are Independent Prescribers Now. Great. Are We Sure About That?
I recently came across an article discussing the shift of pharmacists into the world of independent prescribing, and naturally… I had a few thoughts.
Shocking, I know.
As someone who has spent a good chunk of their career in hospital pharmacy, I have the pleasure of regularly encountering pharmacy students — whom initially started of bright eyed and keen now often just give me the ‘gen z stare’.
so now, i increasingly find myself doing the interrogating, which either means I’m very curious or very nosy. Probably (happily) both.
Recently I got talking to one such student. I asked her whether she felt well equipped to be receiving independent prescriber status upon graduation. Whether her university had prepared her adequately for what is, let’s be honest, a significant clinical responsibility. are they giving you time with f1’s and f2? are you understanding how they reach a final clinical judgement? what does actual decision making look like?
these are all questions that often you wont find explained throughout a pharmacy course, which mostly consists of content around the human body, legalities of a prescription and learning how to resolve errors etc.
After a fair amount of diplomatic back-and-forth — the kind where someone is trying very hard to be polite while also clearly being annoyed — the conclusion was this: she did not feel adequately prepared.
i thought so. now bear in mind this is one student and not a reflection of them all. but having recently completed my IP qualification i couldn’t help but feel the same. massively unprepared and confused about where this qualification would land me. as a budding pharmacist, i chose to be a pharmacist – not a lesser version of a doctor, but somehow THE FEELING OF BEING A PRESCRIBER GIVES ME THE SAME IMPRESSION OF a replica gucci bag in the middle of a market in Morocco.
Now, as a recently qualified independent prescriber myself, I can tell you that the jump into prescribing is not small. It’s not a badge you stick on your lanyard and forget about. It carries weight, it carries risk, and it requires a very specific kind of clinical confidence that takes time to build.
So the idea that we’re handing this status to every graduating pharmacist — regardless of where they trained, how they were taught, or whether their university treated prescribing as a core pillar or a module squeezed in between everything else — is, to put it gently, a situation worth examining.
We’re talking about students coming out of the same degree, with the same qualification, with wildly different levels of confidence and preparation for something they are now legally authorised to do from day one.
Which raises the obvious question: where exactly is the GPhC in all of this?
Are they regulating this? Offering meaningful guidance? Setting a consistent national standard that every programme has to actually meet — not just tick a box and move on? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like there are more loopholes in the oversight of prescribing education than there are in my last hospital formulary update.
I’m sure my £300 SOMETHING annual registration fee is covering something important. I’d just love to know what.
To be clear — I’m not against pharmacists prescribing. Far from it. I think it’s one of the most exciting developments in the profession in years, and done well, it genuinely transforms what we can offer patients. IVE MET SOME AMAZING SEASONED PRESCRIBERS RUNNING THEIR OWN CLINICS AND OWNING THE SPACE, It opens doors. It gives pharmacists a clinical seat at the table that is long overdue.
But “done well” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. BECAUSE IT TAKES TIME, EXPERIENCE AND A CERTAIN CONFIDENCE IN YOUR CLINICAL DECISION MAKING WAY BEFORE YOU EVEN GET TO THAT PRESCRIBING SEAT.
— The Pharmacist
Disclaimer: I am a registered pharmacist, not your pharmacist, not your prescriber, and definitely not a GPhC spokesperson. This is my personal opinion and should not be taken as clinical or professional advice. For that, please speak to someone with a lot more patience than me.
That’s ready to drop straight in. Want me to tweak the tone anywhere, or write a meta description and title tag for SEO purposes too?
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