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The Race to the Bottom
The McDonald’s Big Mac is an icon of take-away eating – let’s face it………..can you remember when you first enjoyed one so many years ago? It’s a guilty pleasure to say the least, but as far as hamburgers go, it is far from the best. In reality, if we were to taste an assortment of…
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What turf war??
Why do we keep apologising so much? I wrote on my Facebook page recently how concerned I was at the perceived turf war between GPs and pharmacists. One of the first comments was that I was “doctor bashing”. It seems normal these days that rational, sensible discussions are a thing of the past. Now, you…
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Statin Therapy – A new Low?
I have a 90 year-old female patient who is physically OK but starting to face the reality of dementia. She showed me the “lovely” invitation from her GP to enroll in the StaREE trial. StaREE is the acronym (don’t you love them!) for “Statins in Reducing Events in the Elderly”. A quaint idea, brilliantly conceived…
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Hysteria personified – the perceived “anti-statin” cult!
Well, it’s finally happened. The demand that every single Australian over 40 be placed on statin therapy hasn’t been fulfilled. Questions being being asked by patients include: Can you explain the different particle sizes of the cholesterol reading you have, and explain where the risk lies…..is it really all about HDL and LDL? You have…
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Behind the Scenes in Natural Therapeutic Medicine
Did you notice the new name? I’ve decided that “natural medicine” doesn’t hold much credence any more. I’m saying that if we can have a therapeutic benefit in an option to powerful medications, then let’s call a spade a bloody shovel!. A meeting of many of the modalities in Melbourne last weekend, attended by some…
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King & Complementary Medicines
I continue to be amazed at how the wide-reaching inquiry into the future of our profession has been hijacked into a focus on complementary medicines and more specifically homeopathy. This enquiry, having now published their findings as “options”, seems to have overlooked the wide-ranging expectations as to how pharmacists can be used more effectively to…
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Has Professional Pharmacy descended to a new low?
The Pharmaceutical Society has come out of hiding and expressed again their ongoing concerns about the quality and control of complementary medicines in Australia. They have a crack at the TGA once again, and imply that pharmacists are unprofessional if they support the sale of these products in a pharmacy setting. If they have the…
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Pain, anxiety and depression, memory issues
Do we really understand what quality-of-life affects pain has on a person who we see regularly for their opioids? Really? Findings published in the Journal of Affective Disorders related to a survey of adults with anxiety or a mood disorder showed that over half cope with chronic pain. It seems that the dual burden of…
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Statins are for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease….really?
Well, well, well…….even pharmacy publications are now casting doubts over the effectiveness of statin therapy in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. What does this mean to the pharmacist when a patient asks “do I really need to take this medicine for my cholesterol?” and goes on to describe a fuzzy memory, aching muscles and generally…
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Are we obsessed with numbers and forget who our patients are?
We live in a world where patience is a diminishing commodity. We want each day to wrap up like an episode of a TV show. We want to end all arguments by having the perfectly worded Facebook post. We want to work out the solutions to our problems, meet our soul-mate, elect the perfect candidate,…