We recently had the misfortune to come across the adverting campaign released by the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) that suggested, with some clever rhetoric, that physicians should be the only health care providers to prescribe drugs.This advertisement was accompanied by a picture of a presumed patient with hands raised in front of his or her face, as if the person was to be the next victim in a teenage slasher movie. It is quite simply a new iteration of an old argument: there is no evidence that prescribing by pharmacists benefits patients. However, does the absence of evidence equate with the absence of benefit? Or is it simply that we have never measured outcomes? Pharmacists now have the opportunity to obtain additional prescribing authority in Alberta, which permits initial-access prescribing and prescribing in the management of chronic diseases, based on independent assessments of patients or the referral of patients from other health care professionals.23 But are hospital pharmacists ready?
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