Pharmacists should stop duplicating GPs' work and instead help the medical profession to tackle complex conditions, Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) chair Clare Gerada warned the C+D Summit last week (April 11).

Dr Gerada said that it made "a lot of sense" for GPs and pharmacists to work more closely, but both professions had to avoid pretending they were exactly the same because pharmacist interventions were causing more work for GPs.

NHS commentator Roy Lilley told delegates that GPs would struggle to manage their workload without pharmacists in the new healthcare environment, as primary care doctors took on services previously managed in secondary care.

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	But Dr Gerada said that initiatives such as MURs had increased GPs' workload at a time when surgeries were "heaving under the pressure", because doctors needed to "review the review" and bring in the patient. Pharmacists needed to understand that telling patients to see their GP at the moment "may well be the straw that breaks the camel's back", she said.

"There isn't a single [pharmacist] intervention I can think of except batch prescriptions that has reduced GPs' workload," Dr Gerada told C+D. "So I think it's important from a pharmacist's point of view that they take work away from the GP and don't just duplicate [it], which usually involves us having to do more work anyway."

Dr Gerada named medicines management and complex comorbidities as areas where pharmacists could play a stronger role.

Mr Lilley told delegates that pharmacy could manage the bulk of long-term conditions. "Once the GP has diagnosed... the patient could then be looked after at the pharmacy," he argued.

But GPs could actually prove a "stumbling block" in pharmacists assuming this wider role, Mr Lilley warned. "Unfortunately GPs are the ones who are commissioning and why should they see money walking out of the door?" he asked.

Workload pressure was the only motivation for GPs to give up services, Mr Lilley stressed. "If you're going to drag stuff out of hospitals and stick it in surgeries and look after everyone with a long-term condition, you're going to need [more capacity], that's for sure," he said.

"I can't understand why GPs want to do more and more work when it's clear they're not going to get more and more remuneration," Mr Lilley added. "At some point in time, they will twig that if they commission some of the things they struggle to deliver to places like community pharmacy, they will make their businesses more profitable and won't sit there whinging about falling income and [increasing] workloads."