Advanced Pharmacy Australia (AdPha) today welcomes the final report to the Unleashing the potential of our workforce – Scope of Practice Review which recognises the need for a nationally consistent, team-based approach to patient care aligning with AdPha’s vision for pharmacy and the wider health network.
AdPha President Tom Simpson FANZCAP (Lead&Mgmt) says the long-awaited report features recommendations that will help build the capacity of our health system by expanding the role of pharmacists to deliver in areas within their scope.
‘Establishing a primary care workforce development program will help support retention and is something AdPha has been helping to address through our recently launched Primary Care Resident Training Program. This on-the-job learning pathway is aligned with ANZCAP recognition, supporting pharmacists working in primary care, transitions of care and community pharmacy.
‘We also support recommendations to develop principles for interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional capabilities for primary care, collaborative practice and First Nations health care to contribute to contemporary and consistent cross-professional learning and practice.
‘Our members live and breathe multidisciplinary collaborative practice and have pioneered pharmacist-led prescribing models such as Partnered Pharmacist Medication Prescribing (PPMP) in hospitals for over a decade, which can and should be implemented into primary healthcare settings.
‘This is advanced pharmacy: embedding and scaling up successfully piloted, evidenced-based programs, while ensuring they are consistently embedded into national standards of care, including AdPha’s Clinical Pharmacy Standards and specialty Standards of Practice.
‘This aligns with the Scope of Practice Review report’s recommendation supporting a program of review and potential harmonisation of existing legislation and regulation to improve consistency of care across Australia.’
While welcoming the recommendations, Mr Simpson notes the success of scope expansion means harnessing, in full, the capabilities of the whole pharmacy workforce.
‘The development of a National Skills and Capability Framework and Matrix to consistently recognise capabilities across health professions is an important step in removing unfounded assumptions about scope of practice.
‘It is important that allied health assistants and pharmacy technicians are a part of this journey; it is simply not sustainable to expand pharmacists’ scope without uplifting technicians.
‘We have learnt this through many decades of practice in other countries, including the UK, with programs such as “tech-check-tech”. In some Australian hospitals, technicians are already supporting pharmacists with taking medication histories and being involved in medication reconciliation.
‘Aiding this effort would be the inclusion of AdPha’s recently-circulated Competency Standard for Pharmacy Technicians into this new capability framework.
‘We congratulate Independent Review Lead, Professor Mark Cormack, and his team on their thorough and insightful work in developing these recommendations which we believe will foster a sustainable and progressive primary care system in Australia.’
