Welcome to this week’s edition of i2P (Information to Pharmacists) E-Magazine dated Monday 22 February, 2016.
This week we focus on the evolving pharmacy workplace and how it has to become happier.
The ingredients are generally well known, but are not practiced too well these days.
Essentially, community pharmacists must aspire to become leaders and effectively delegate competent people into management or supervisory positions.
Unless the top end is tidied up, the tail that follows will have no motivation.
The result will be a sluggish work environment and a business with poor profitability.
The other component for happy workplaces is to ensure that there is always an innovative program (or project) being developed to fill any gaps in the pharmacy presentation to a patient or customer.
It’s simple once you get in the right frame of mind, and enjoyable, particularly as one project finishes and a new one takes its place.
Read: A Happy Workplace is also a Profitable Business Environment
The technology creating portable and accurate biometric readings for a patient appears to have arrived.
A stable platform now exists that measures components of sweat and calibrates the readings by measuring skin temperature.
This device will now make its way into the market-place and while its target market is the consumer at large, there is plenty of opportunity for pharmacists to be involved with these devices:
Read: Biometric Systems – Coming to a Place Near You
Chemmart grabbed a few headlines recently when it announced a DNA testing system to be available through their pharmacies, combined with a promised collaboration with GP’s.
The system holds promise because its purpose is to enable better prescribing of medicines, more closely matching a patient’s genetic profile.
Disruption is likely to be a feature of this service by both GP’s and drug companies, until the system starts producing results and forming an evidence base for the test.
They have already had one complaint surrounding the advertising of the service, but an adjustment to the wording and a correct market-positioning of the service will see a promising opportunity and direction.
Read: Opportunities for Clinical Services
Industrial agriculture headed up by Monsanto seems to be behind an abortive strategy involving the Zika virus in Brazil.
What amazes is the fact that an outbreak of microcephaly in Brazil has been blamed on a mosquito-born Zika virus that has been around for years with no major dramas, except for a very itchy rash, which left untreated, looks unsightly.
It is not life-threatening and has not had a proven link established for microcephaly with Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
What is happening is that water has been contaminated in these particular areas in Brazil with a chemical that is known to cause deformities in babies.
Called Pyriproxyfen is a growth inhibitor of developing organisms and these facts are being suppressed by the companies concerned, the mainstream press and the Brazilian government.
Read: Dumbing us Down with the Zika Virus
One quality of effective leaders is they acknowledge people around them and continually offer encouragement.
Harvey Mackay is back with us again and has an article describing this important quality. And encouragement is what is required at all levels of the pharmacy profession right now!
Read: Encouragement is verbal sunshine
No matter what is encompassed in the words “primary health care”, “collaboration”, “patient-centred home” – they all represent flashpoints between GP’s and pharmacists at the official level.
At the coalface level, where there may be a genuine spark to give substance to those flashpoint words, we all know that we will have to fight to earn our space.
Despite the fact that we have occupied the primary health care space for as long as I can remember.
GP’s are determined to wrestle this space with no holds barred, but they are slowly wakening to the fact that a lot of health professionals are already there and they have to give ground.
However, they have positioned themselves at the top through an organisation that is designed to create the evidence bullets to conquer any opposition.
Read: The Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care Inc
And we finish up this weeks’ offering with a range of media releases from pharmacy leadership organisations.
PSA – PSA Media Release – Mental health expert Patrick McGorry to headline conference
ASMI – ASMI Media Release – Complementary Medicines highly regulated in Australia
NPS – NPS Media Release – APPLICATIONS CLOSING FOR NMS 2016 ASIA-PACIFIC SCHOLARSHIP
Enjoy this weeks’ offering and use the panel below this editorial to submit any “Letters to the Editor”.
Neil Johnston
Editor, i2P E-Magazine
Monday 22 February 2016