Joseph Cunningham, Gleaner Writer

Left: Dr. Alverston Bailey, president Medical Association of Jamaica.   Right: Edith Allwood-Anderson, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

The head of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), Dr. Alverton Bailey, has rejected, in the latest round of an ongoing rift with nurses, calls for them to be given responsibility for independent evaluation of prescrip-tion orders.

The call had been made by Edith Allwood-Anderson, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ), in an article published in The Gleaner, last week.

According to the MAJ president, nurses have no authority to evaluate prescription orders.

In a letter sent to the NAJ on Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by The Gleaner, Dr. Bailey said, "The paradigm shift you recommended in the news article, namely that nurses be given the responsibility to make inde-pendent assessment of prescription orders, cannot be entertained by doctors. We insist that this is the domain of the pharmacist."

He argued that pharmacists are the professionals with the highest competence with regard to drug therapy and that "we doctors even seek the guidance of pharmacists at times".

Further, Dr. Bailey said phar-macists major in the study of 'pharmacy sciences', a four-year degree programme, which nurses do not do.

An insult to doctors

Dr. Bailey also suggested that the recommendation for independent assessment of prescription by nurses is an insult to doctors, which implies that local doctors are incompetent.

However, Noel Julius, nursing supervisor at Bellevue Hospital, while refusing to respond directly to Dr. Bailey's statement, said, "It is part of nursing training that we study pharmacology."

He said the subject area involves the study of the trade names of prescriptions, the dosages required for specific illnesses, and their side-effects. He contended that nurses know enough to evaluate prescriptions.