I'm an Australian DPT student and many courses around the country are shifting towards more pharmacological subjects as part of their foundation studies. My course is soon to include an entire year of pharma, alongside the almighty anatomy studies we usually take.

It's no secret that this is a push by a few higher-ups who really want physios to prescribe and inject certain drugs legally - and I'm not entirely against that.

What confuses me is when I think "when would we actually use those prescription rights?" I'm not one of those "active modalities only" purists but so far in clinic the only drugs we recommend are over-the-counter NSAIDS. The obvious one is steroid injections but there's still hardly any university education on them other than "multiple steroid injections = bad" and I'll admit a bit of ignorance on that issue. The only time I could imagine using this is the prescription of powerful anti-inflammatories like mobic, which many of our patients already have prescribed, we simply educate them on timing and dosage.

It just seems like a big increase in responsibility with no clear clinical benefit. I very well could be missing something here so please share your thoughts and clinical experience.