The professional body for the pharmacy profession has launched its manifesto ahead of the Scottish parliament elections in May.
Entitled, Right Medicine – Better Health – Fitter Future, the manifesto focuses on recognising pharmacists’ expertise in the use of medicines and calls for greater use of pharmacists to deliver better patient care and a more effective NHS.
It sets out recommendations to secure a greater clinical role for pharmacists, enable further integration into the NHS, and to free up more of the pharmacists’ time to help them to provide more patient care.
Recommendations include: giving community pharmacists electronic access to patient records (with patient consent,) and providing greater access to electronic prescribing.
In terms of patient services, it specifically calls for:
- Integration of pharmacists into emerging health hubs.
- • Positioning of pharmacists at the point of admission to hospital.
- • Integrating a dedicated pharmacist role into care homes and aligning one community pharmacy and one GP practice to each care home.
- • Implementing the recommendations in the recentout-of-hours reporton the future contribution of community pharmacy.
In order to build future resilience in the population around health and medicines, the manifesto also proposes that health literacy become an integral part of Curriculum for Excellence. Everyone should gain an understanding of their health and the role medicines play in supporting it from a young age.
Dr John McAnaw, Chair of the Scottish Pharmacy Board of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said, ‘I think the numbers we report here for Scotland speak for themselves. Scotland needs to fully utilise the expertise of pharmacists to ensure people get the best out of their medicines.’
