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Confusion reigns
Because of the rather appalling protection given by the 2017 vaccination campaign, I wonder where we will go with the 2018 version. There’s certainly mixed messages about the relative effectiveness we can expect. Interestingly, I posed this question on social media a few days ago. What might we expect? Will you get vaccinated? The responses…
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Health by Stealth!
Are we being complicit in accepting the gradual lowering of thresholds for various treatments? There’s some interesting discussions at the moment on the Cholesterol Treatment Trialist’s Collaboration. This is an international group of doctors and statisticians that includes Australia’s NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre. This collaboration seems to have a dogmatic approach to advocating the wider…
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How did we go?
The codeine debacle has come and gone, and I’m not sure if our profession has come out of this squeaky clean. Judging by the number of media queries around the place, it’s timely to look back and see if this issue could have been handled better. And those enquiries and still coming. In retrospect, might…
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Are your patients involved in a clinical trial?
A 90-year-old patient of mine has given me two invitations sent to her by her surgery and signed by her GP, to participate in the STAREE trial. She has (one year ago) diagnosed early-onset Alzheimer’s and was unsuccessfully given one of the usual drugs which worsened her mental state. Interestingly, before that prescription was offered,…
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Depressive illness – can we get involved?
The challenge of mental health is something in which we are intimately involved. How many of our patients struggle with SSRI and SNRI medications, only to struggle further with their symptoms and feelings. It is well known that many drugs modify normal and abnormal behaviours by changing the amounts of particular neurotransmitters present within the…
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No Evidence? ….Who’s kidding whom?
I had the privilege last week of speaking on both days at the 4th Annual National Institute of Integrative Medicine Symposium in Melbourne. Twenty-five International and Australian speakers presented the latest evidence-based research, therapies, treatments and innovative technologies. The topic list contained many of the issues our patients are confronting each day: Cancer: Integrative Oncology,…
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Opioids & Non-opioids
I’m a turmeric, magnesium powder, lipoic acid, vitamin B12, vitamin D, arnica and omega-3 krill oil type of person when it comes to pain. I see great results when anybody in pain is empowered to make some decisions based on their expectations, rather than be told what they need, without adequate explanations of the range…
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Please give me eye contact!
It what seems obvious findings, patients prefer their doctors to be engaging in conversation, and to ignore any online screens. As electronic medical records become more common, it’s not unusual for doctors to enter data into a computer as they talk with their patients. Doctors seeing patients for the first time, when trying to build…
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“Pushy” customers or are they merely “informed”?
I was rather puzzled when reading an article on the challenges of a “pushy” customer and the pressures placed on student pharmacists. I’m puzzled because we, in pharmacy, have lost the skills of listening. We have become so “medicalised” that we now seem to “tell” rather than “partner in a satisfactory outcome”. Whether the educators…
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The “flu”……What role can we play?
It’s been interesting listening and watching as “experts” try and explain the issues behind what has been a disastrous vaccination results in Australia. The news each evening has the usual media beat-up where we are all going to die as this dangerous, mutating virus envelopes us all. But what have we been telling our patients?…