Andy Gray
In searching for explanatory imagery to penetrate the murk of legal language, we often come upon innovative ways of expressing ourselves. So it was last year, when the need to provide a means to protect the changes brought by the contested Medicines Amendment Act from the scything repeals included in the SAMMDRA Bill gave rise to the "parking bay" analogy. Instead of repealing all of Act 101, SAMMDRA left "parking bays", the sections which would be amended by Act 90 of 1997. To such manoeuvres we might one day owe the legal right to generic substitution. However, in this editorial, I want to play with another set of words. In the context of dispensing, I want to ask: what is the norm and what the exception? The proposed regulations to the Pharmacy Act introduce the concept of "periodic supervision" of post-basic assistants employed in public sector clinics. That is to be the norm. The exception would be for a nurse to perform the act of dispensing, for which she will require a section 33 permit (and have completed a supplementary course). She will also, in order to prescribe, have to obtain a section 38A permit, issued in terms of the Nursing Act. This section still states that the nurse may only dispense in the absence of a pharmacist. But is the norm truly to be what the law purports, and will the exception be so uncommon? Unless we can attract many more pharmacists to district practice, harness the resources of the private sector in truly collaborative ventures and train a multitude of assistants to post-basic level, then to the majority of the population contact with the pharmacy profession will remain the exception, not the norm. We’d better be sure we want to park in that bay.
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