Safer Prescribing
You Deserve
Real Medical Care
For decades, the separation of the prescriber (your doctor) and the dispenser (your pharmacist) has been the bedrock of patient safety in Australia. This crucial check-and-balance ensures independent, unbiased medical care.
The Pharmacy Guild is lobbying to change this. They want pharmacists to both diagnose conditions, prescribe medications, and then sell you that medication — all in one transaction.
Why Separation Matters
to Your Health
The current Australian system works because two independent professionals review your medication
The Prescriber (Doctor):
After years of comprehensive medical training, your doctor diagnoses your condition, reviews your entire history, and selects the best treatment. Their primary interest is your health, not selling a product.
The Dispenser (Pharmacist):
Your pharmacist performs a final, independent safety check. They verify the dosage, screen for dangerous interactions with other drugs you take, and ensure the prescription is appropriate before dispensing it.
The Problem:
When one person does both, that critical, independent second opinion is eliminated.
The pharmacist becomes the diagnostician, the prescriber, and the salesperson.
Why Do We Need Safer Prescribing?
Training Gaps are Enormous
Doctors spend nearly a decade in training before they're allowed to independently diagnose a patient and prescribe medicines — including upwards of 5,000 hours of supervised, real-world clinical experience treating real patients with real complications.
The prescribing courses currently being rolled out for pharmacists run for roughly 700-800 hours in total, with as little as 120-150 hours of actual clinical experience.
That is not a small gap. That is the difference between a decade of training and a few months of it — for medicines that include Schedule 8 controlled drugs like oxycodone, morphine and fentanyl, substances with serious potential for misuse, dependency, and harm.
Diagnosis isn't just "knowing what a drug does." It's ruling out the dozen other things a symptom could mean, understanding how a medicine interacts with everything else a patient takes, and recognising when something doesn't add up.
That's what years & years of clinical training are for.
Join the movement for Safer Prescribing
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Signed Petition
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Harms Reported
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A Conflict of Interest that
cannot be tolerated anywhere else
Imagine if a car salesman was also the mechanic who certified that the car was in good condition.
Or imagine if a real estate agent was also the inspector that signed off on the building report for the sale.
Now picture a pharmacy where the same person can now diagnoses your condition, decides you need a medicine, writes the prescription; and then proceeds to sell you that medicine, profiting from the sale without anyone else in the picture.
This isn't a hypothetical. It's the model currently being proposed and already implemented in some places.
There are no checks and balances and serious harms are unreported and undetected due to inadequate surveillance.
"Better than nothing" isn't the same as "safe"
The usual argument for pharmacist prescribing is access — that in areas with long GP wait times, a pharmacist is better than no care at all.
But that framing hides the real choice being made. The alternative to a rushed pharmacy consult isn't "no healthcare forever" — it's fixing GP access, funding telehealth, and investing in the workforce we already trust to do this safely. Australia has one of the best primary care systems in the world. Patching a shortage by lowering the safety bar isn't reform, it's a trade-off patients never agreed to.
Other countries that have gone further and faster on non-medical prescribing have seen worse outcomes and more fragmented care as a result.
Australia doesn't have to repeat that experiment to find out the same thing will happen here.
These harms often go unreported
When something goes wrong in a hospital, there are formal, mandatory adverse event reporting systems. When something goes wrong in a pharmacy prescribing consult, there often isn't an equivalent pathway and patients frequently don't know who to tell.
We built this site to change that.
If you or someone you know has experienced a missed diagnosis, an inappropriate prescription, a dangerous interaction, or any other harm connected to pharmacist prescribing, we want to hear about it. Reports can be made with or without your name attached.
We'll send periodic, de-identified summaries of what's being reported — so patients, doctors, and policymakers can see the real-world pattern, not just the press releases.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main goal of SaferPrescribing.com?
SaferPrescribing.com is a doctor-led advocacy initiative dedicated to preserving the crucial separation between the person who prescribes your medication (your doctor) and the person who sells it to you (your pharmacist). We believe that maintaining this strict division—which has long been the bedrock of patient safety in Australia—is essential to ensuring independent medical decisions free from financial conflicts of interest.
Why is combining prescribing and dispensing dangerous?
When a single entity is allowed to diagnose a condition, prescribe a drug, and financially benefit from the retail sale of that exact medication, it removes a vital "second check." Currently, pharmacists act as an independent safety barrier to catch potential errors in dosage or dangerous drug interactions made by a prescriber. Eliminating this division removes that critical safety net and introduces a commercial conflict of interest into clinical decision-making.
Who can report to the "Report a Harm" portal?
We invite patients, family members, caregivers, and medical professionals to submit reports. If you or a loved one have experienced fragmented care, missed or delayed diagnoses, incorrect medication management, or physical harm resulting from a pharmacist prescribing outside their traditional scope of practice, your evidence is crucial. All submissions are treated with strict confidentiality and used to build a data-driven case for policymakers.
Is this campaign anti-pharmacist?
Not at all. We deeply respect and value pharmacists as indispensable experts in the healthcare ecosystem. Their specialized knowledge of corporate drug interactions, compounding, and medication management is vital. This campaign is explicitly against the structural changes pushed by the Pharmacy Guild that alter their scope of practice, remove independent safety checks, and place hardworking community pharmacists in a conflicted position between retail targets and clinical care.
How will my signature on the petition make a difference?
Your signature provides the collective leverage needed to influence state and federal health ministers, regulators, and lawmakers. Independent medical care is a bipartisan public health issue. By adding your voice, you help us demonstrate that the Australian public prioritizes robust patient safety and unbiased medical advice over commercial convenience.
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Safer Prescribing is an independent, clinician-led initiative. We are not opposed to pharmacists — they are highly trained medication experts and valued members of the healthcare team. We are opposed to a model that asks them to diagnose, prescribe, and sell in the same breath, with no independent safeguard in between.