jsn112 said:
Believe it or not pharmacists know more about the medicine than
doctors. You don't have to be a doctor to write prescriptions. Nurse practioners and physician assistants can do it, too, with much less schoolings.
NP/PA's prescribing powers are limited, they cannot just write a prescription for 'anything'. And most have to work under the physician. With some exceptions, diagnosises and prescriptions made by the NP/PA have to be counter signed by a physician.
Diagnosis and treatment may seem like a bit of scribbles to you, but there is a lot of thinking that goes on behind the scribbles. Physicians who are not trained in their specialities do not (normally) venture outside their area of expertise when prescribing drugs. If you think writing prescription can be done with people with far less schooling, why is it that a cardiologist would never want to touch prescriptions for people with kidney problems? Evidently, you know something they don't.
Anyway, back on topic....
The difference between a pharmacist and a physician is that a physician is trained to
diagnose and treat a patient and a pharmacist's professional obligation is to ensure that the correct drugs are given and that they are not medically harmful to the patient.
People need to understand the difference between making a moral judgement and making a professional judgement. A pharmacist's moral judgement may prevent him/her from giving viagra to a gay man but their professional judgement says the viagra is safe for that gay man, therefore, they should be expected to
do their job as stated by Walgreens and give the man his viagra (unless they work at their own pharmacy, in which case they can make value judgements against their own customers I guess...).
Therefore, if the physician was to prescribe the morning after pills for some other reasons that's not related to 'the morning after'---and yes, it does happen....the pharmacist has no professional jurisdiction to say otherwise.
In other words, the physician knows the patient's problems and prescribes drugs for their medical problem, the pharmacist ensures that the proper drugs are given, and that the doctor did not make a medical mistake when prescribing them, the pharmacist CANNOT make a medical diagnosis on the patient---i.e, they can't just make diagnosis on the spot for their patient and disagree with the medical treatment unless it's a misuse of the drug. That is outside their medical jurisdication.
To go back to the Viagra analogy, the pharmacist may assume that the gay man was given viagra for impotence. However, the drug was originally tested for use in heart patients. I'm not sure if it is prescribed that way, but suppose viagra can be used for people with certain types of heart conditions. Now, imagine the physician prescribing viagra for heart problems to a man who happen to be gay. Is it right for the pharmacist to assume that the gay man would use it for sex, and thereby deny the man the drugs?
I believe this is at the heart of the problem: who has the right to decide what types of drugs a patient can use to treat their health problems? The physician? Or the pharmacist? I'd say the the physcian simply because
that is the physician's job: to understand the patient's medical history and to make diagnosis for them. The pharmacist's job is to ensure proper dosage and medication of said drugs and to make sure it is not misused. That is where they can check the physician---to ensure the medications are used
to do what they are medically intended to do.
To make assumpations and value judgments on legally prescribed drugs, which are otherwise used correctly, falls outside the jurisdiction of the pharmacist.
