PRESCRIBING PHARMACIST, Branca (FNPI): "Let it be clarified immediately"

Fedaisf editorial staff

June 9, 2016

The National Federation of Italian Parapharmacies has been carrying out for some years the proposal to introduce the figure of the prescribing pharmacist in Italy. Good that now other voices join ours. Let anyone take paternity, if it helps to speed up the process.

We at FNPI are not jealous of our ideas, we have so many.

Seriously, thank you Dr. Cabas of the lucidity of his reasoning, which I welcome, above all in observing that in the face of a policy that unfortunately seems increasingly dedicated to the commodification of this profession, projecting it towards big capitals, there are more and more colleagues, from pharmacies, parapharmacies, employees, owners, hospitals, territorial, who are somehow rebelling against this direction and little by little are coagulating around some ideas, as if to defend the fort of our profession and professionalism. I would like to point out to my colleague only that we pharmacists who own parapharmacies categorically reject the label of promoters of "claims of a directly or indirectly economic nature".

Indeed we often find ourselves incredibly alone in strenuously defending the role of the pharmacist. What we are ranting to anyone who is willing to listen to us is precisely that the category of pharmacists, to which we belong, should focus more on enhancing their professional dignity, without, for example, making it depend on the place where this profession is exercised, nor even less enslaving it to pure market logics such as those of large incoming capital. In this context, our entrepreneurial claims coincide splendidly with our professional ones, and this makes the wall of ostracism erected with each of our proposals even more incomprehensible. It always comes back to that: we prefer to let big capital, shareholders and marketing sharks enter the world of pharmacy rather than investing, entrepreneurially and professionally, in the figure of the pharmacist, wherever he works. Hence our proposal, already filed with the Ministry of Health, for the figure of the prescribing pharmacist.

Lastly, I would like to point out one thing that my colleague has overlooked: the figure of the prescribing pharmacist, albeit with the necessary limits, would also give legislative legitimacy, it would bring out of the limbo of daily illegality in which all those pharmacies find themselves today where prescription drugs are dispensed every day without the due prescription. But not only that, together with the legislative legitimacy, the prescribing pharmacist will finally have full responsibility for it, at every legal and institutional level. If therefore in many ways we can all stop pretending to ignore the phenomenon of abusive dispensing, because within certain limits it will suddenly become legal, on the other hand the pharmacist will bear not only the relative honors, but also the burdens of medical and legal liability.

And he will also have taken an adequate course to be able to prescribe and dispense with a greater criterion, instead of playing at being a doctor, while today too many dispensations and too many advice are given in an approximate and aggressive way, as well as illegal. In this sense, I also invite the category of doctors to reflect on how much their preparation and profession is usurped on a daily basis, not by everyone, of course, I know many very valid pharmacists, but by many. The introduction of the role of the prescribing pharmacist could curb this phenomenon, to the benefit of the client/patient.

Dr. Matteo Branca

By Redazione – 9 giugno 2016 – quellichelafarmacia.it

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