RPS view on pharmacists being enabled to provide fit notes
RPS
agrees that pharmacists should be able to provide fit notes for those
patients where they have full access to the patient’s history and
medical requirements.
The change in legislation is enabling and
communications around any legal changes should make this clear as we are
concerned that pharmacists in all care settings could be put under
undue pressure to issue a fit note now legislation changes have been
made.
Before pharmacists issue fit notes, we believe that the following should be in place:
- The signing of the fit note needs to be relevant to the clinical
consultation and only undertaken where it aligns with the pharmacist’s
case load
- The pharmacist should be competent in the assessment
and / or treatment of the condition for which the fit note is being
supplied
- There must be access to a single patient record to
enable the clinician signing the fit note to have access to all the
relevant information
- The process and infrastructure should enable digital signatures
- Workload should not be significantly impacted for any one individual pharmacist
- Healthcare professionals should undertake the national training available to support them in writing fit notes.
The
completion of fit notes should not be seen as a purely administrative
task and should only be delegated to those who have clinical knowledge
of the patient. Ideally, they should be completed by the person who
deems the fit note necessary after a clinical consultation, as they will
have made that clinical decision and be familiar with the reasons for
it. The ability of other professionals to complete fit notes should not
mean that medical professionals delegate the task and the workload is
just shifted to others.
Date of publication : February 2022