Yesterday it was reported that plans were afoot to allow patients to obtain antibiotics from pharmacies without the need to see a doctor. But it wasn’t this that I found most concerning in the article published by The Times for perhaps there is evidence that, in certain well prescribed circumstances at least, they can be safely and appropriately issued by pharmacists.
Nor indeed was it the news per se that Thérèse Coffey had on occasions given antibiotics to friends and family members as she is surely not the first person to ever pass on such medicines to others.
What does bother me though is the fact that she so freely admits to having done so and, seemingly, uses her behaviour to imply, that any old fool can dish out antibiotics to anyone who is ‘feeling unwell’. When my patients confess to taking drugs issued to members of their family they do at least recognise that their actions are unwise and are embarrassed enough to apologise for what they have done. The comments of Thérèse Coffey suggest that we have a Secretary of State for Health who has less understanding of the issues around antibiotic prescribing than our patients do and that should be something that worries us all.
Of course having said all that we must ask the question as to whether it is just antibiotics that’s she’s been handing out. For there are one or two other drugs that, if she’s been supplying them to some of her colleagues, it would go some way to explaining some of their recent poor decision making and increasingly erratic behaviour.
Other tales of The Secretary of State for Health’
To read ‘GPs are responsible – it’s time they went’, lick here
To read ‘The Three Little GPs and the Big Bad Secretary of State for Health’, click here
And some more unlikely stories:
To read ‘Mr Benn – the GP’, click here
To read ‘A GP called Paddington’, click here
To read ‘Scooby Doo and the Deserted Medical Centre’, click here
To read ‘Bagpuss and the NHS’, click here
To read ‘A Dream of an Antiques Roadshow’, click here
To read ‘The NHS Emporium’, click here
To read ‘Mr McGregor’s Revenge – A Tale of Peter Rabbit’, click here
To read ‘Jeepy Leepy and the NHS’, click here
To read ‘Dr Wordle and the Mystery Diagnosis’, click here
To read ‘The Happy Practice – A Cautionary Tale’, click here
To read ‘The Scrooge Chronicles’, click here
To read ‘Jeeves and the Hormone Deficiency’, click here
To read ‘General Practices are Go!’, click here
To read ‘A Mission Impossible’, click here
To read ‘A Grimm Tale’, click here
To read ‘The General Practitioner – Endangered’, click here
To read ‘The State of Disrepair Shop’, click here
Some musings 
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