Physiotherapists Battle for Prescription Rights
The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA), whom started a bid in 2015 for physiotherapists to gain prescribing rights, expects to pass a framework to the Physiotherapy Board of Australia within 12 months.
Drafting the range of medicines it hopes to gain access to, the APA emphasized that the goal is to have rights to prescribe medication that will benefit patients undergoing physical therapy, and is not suggesting a complete access to medicines.
“We are not looking at having just across the board access to prescribing all medications,” Australian Physiotherapy Association National President Phil Calvert said.
“We’re looking for access to prescribing medications in certain clinical scenarios that improve their outcomes, for example someone who comes in for an injury and needs pain relief to manage their rehabilitation.
After passing the model to the Physiotherapy Board of Australia, the process will be transferred to the government. Furthermore, extensive consultations with the medical profession need to be materialized. Once a model is introduced, physiotherapists would need to apply for board endorsement and meet certain criteria to gain rights for prescription.
The patient’s benefits from the physiotherapist’s appeal for rights to prescribe are:
- Provide patients with faster and more streamlined access to care
- Allows patients save money from multiple consultations
- Saves patient’s time and effort by consulting in one place / or one medical service provider
“The benefits to the patient are giving access to all the care in the one place by a professional that has a high level of expertise in the area they’re working in so it reduces duplication of seeing multiple professionals to get comprehensive care for their condition” said Mr Calvert.
Despite all the benefits that this appeal can provide for the patients, it is not without opposition. With the exception of dentists, three years prior, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) rejected all forms of non-medical practitioner prescribing. Moreover, in 2015, the idea of allowing physiotherapists to prescribe medication garnered mixed reactions from the medical professionals.
“Physiotherapy is a profession that traditionally and currently has a really strong alignment with general practice and the medical profession and we only want to continue to strengthen that so their input and collaboration on that is really important to us.”
Another issue inhibiting the physiotherapist’s petition for the right to prescribe is the risk of drug dependence, misuse, and doctor shipping of opioid analgesics.
“With any medication there is the potential for abuse. What I think is important is that if the training and the clinical governance around anyone that prescribes is appropriate then there’s checks and balances to help minimize those really poor outcomes.
In opposition to prescribing by physiotherapists, AMA Vice President Dr Tony Bartone said that all non-medical prescribing carried the risk of fragmenting care, duplication and conflicting resource allocation.
“It makes more sense to have someone across all patient management and only a doctor has the full picture of all the conditions that may be involved,” said Dr Bartone.
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