The National Council of Laboratory Diagnosticians makes a comment on the omission of the body of the professional diagnosticians' self-government among those giving opinions on the draft regulation of the Minister of Health on the pilot program of pharmacist-led reproductive health care.
The morning-after pill: Laboratory diagnosticians left out
Published April 18, 2024 08:03
The draft regulation provides for the launch of a pilot program through which pharmacists will be able to issue a pharmaceutical prescription for emergency contraception containing ulipristal acetate in its composition, if justified by the patient's health condition related to the risk of an unplanned pregnancy.
The designer proposes to verify the adequacy and effectiveness of the pharmacist's interview and potentially resulting pharmaceutical prescriptions for emergency contraception in order to verify their potential for, among other things.inter alia, obtaining by the ultimate beneficiaries of the projected more detailed, precise, reliable, and thus complete knowledge of contraception (including emergency contraception).
The Council emphatically emphasizes that the proposed regulation is a health care act, and thus should be forwarded to the National Council of Laboratory Diagnosticians for its opinion, pursuant to Article 88(3) of the Law of September 15, 2022 on Laboratory Medicine. Moreover, given the scope of the pilot program, the matter regulated by it definitely belongs to the scope of interest of the professional self-government of laboratory diagnosticians.
Considering the important intentions underlying the pilot program being introduced, related to family planning and infertility treatment, and fully agreeing with the need and the proper direction of the solutions being introduced, the Council indicates that the draft pilot program should be supplemented with the necessary element of medical laboratory diagnostics.
As proposed, the draft assumes only discussion, by a pharmacist, of the principles of performing tests for self-monitoring and interpreting the results of these tests, excluding the role of laboratory diagnosticians. On the other hand, in order to increase the effectiveness of the pilot program, the draft would also need to regulate the follow-up performance of laboratory tests to obtain test results for in vitro diagnostics allowing the diagnosis of pregnancy and for the diagnosis of diseases of the urogenital system in women and men.
Source: KIDL
