Pharmacist Prescribing: A Symptom and a Problem

The growing debate around pharmacist prescribing in Australia has become a polarizing issues in healthcare - but it could be a unifying one. On one side, medical practitioners argue that prescribing medicines should remain strictly within the domain of medicine. On the other, pharmacists—clearly expert in pharmacology—believe that extending their prescribing rights is a natural evolution of their role.

Both sides, however, may be missing the point.

Prescribing is, or atleast should be, a minor role in the provision of health care. Health care is not simply the act of writing a script—it is the endpoint of a diagnostic process that should consider the whole person. Diagnosis, in turn, should lead to treatment plans that may or may not involve pharmaceuticals. The idea that health interventions must culminate in a drug prescription is a paradigm shaped and perpetuated by the medical profession itself—a framework now being replicated by others in healthcare.

I believe Medico’s should be concerned about pharmacists prescribing - it’s like asking your barber if you need a haircut. The real issue is not who should prescribe, but how narrowly we’ve defined care. Pharmacists stepping into prescribing roles reflects a system built on chemical interventions as the cornerstone of treatment. Instead of debating professional boundaries within this outdated model, perhaps we should be re-evaluating the model itself.

Health is not the absence of disease; it is the presence of something. Function, resilience, and balance. Healthcare must therefore extend beyond the pharmaceutical paradigm— well beyond it in fact. Medicines have their place, but they should not define it. The pharmaceutical era has accompanied a series of societal crises - not least amongst them the ‘Chronic Disease Epidemic’.

The conversation about pharmacist prescribing is devoid of nuance - at least in the media - which is rarely able to convey the complexities or context appropriately nowadays. Our society faces real problems, of magnitude, but they will not be resolved by bulk billing or pharmacy prescribing.