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Gender Equality, Professional Pharmacist Equality and All Health Equality – Same problem, different label
Today, I randomly tuned in to an ABC program that marked the United Nations (UN) International Women’s Day. It marked the 20th anniversary of the first forum that was held in Beijing. The forum lamented that women had not advanced their cause (gender equality) since that first forum and still lagged behind in salary and…
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The Huge Information Disconnect in Primary Health Care
The world is beginning to wake up to the resource that comprises pharmacy as the Medicines Use Review (MUR) program in the UK has just been “discovered” by health planners. Australia, of course, has had Home Medicines Reviews successfully in place for well over a decade now, but they are a well kept secret between…
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Patient Engagement Involves a Knowledge Exchange
Knowledge exchange occurs when a clinical pharmacist uses best evidence to inform a patient on which direction to take to create a good health care outcome. Knowledge exchange is about sharing knowledge freely to make a difference in health outcomes for patients. During the knowledge exchange the pharmacist uses mentoring processes to act firstly as…
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Patient Engagement is Patient Management and Customer Conversion
How often do you openly engage with a patient, particularly when you have a busy dispensing schedule under way and the order in your day is rapidly becoming “disorder”. Eyes averted, you bend your head to avoid eye contact, because that would extend patient engagement, and with that, your day suddenly just deteriorated a shade…
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Pharmacy by Design – Reinventing the Dispensary
Recently, we published some work (Pharmacy by Design) carried out by some US design researchers that involved pharmacy design basic research. The company, which is called Nurture by Steelcase, conducted research over a number of differing pharmacy settings and came up with a number of principles that held true for a pharmacy in all those…
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Pharmacy by Design
Pharmacy renewal, a process that will start in earnest in this year of 2015, cannot occur without shop refitting or modification along with design changes reflecting the shape and style of the workflows that have to be accommodated. Major designers, stimulated by Afffordable Care Legislation in the US, have turned their attention on healthcare as…
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Perceived Hurdles For Clinical Services Published
Recent reports in various media cited research done in respect cardiovascular disease and pharmacist involvement delivered as a paid clinical service provided from a pharmacy environment. The research was undertaken by the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Pharmacy which conducted in-depth interviews with 21 NSW community pharmacists, based around the feasibility of a cardiovascular disease…
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Knowledge Products and Innovation Should be Organised and Rewarded
Australia should be supporting young health professionals (including pharmacists) who have skills in innovation and entrepreneurship that would improve our health systems, create disruptive businesses models that would prevent organisations such as Colesworth from contemplating a takeover and also to drive Australia’s economy in its transition from a resource-based economy to a service-based economy. Australia…
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Transformational Change in Healthcare and Education
Transformational is the “buzz” word given to that segment of change required to eliminate medical errors and prevent iatrogenic disease from occurring. In September 2013, the Journal of Patient Safety reported that an estimated 400,000 patients die each year in the US due to preventable medical errors. If that number of people were to die…
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The Battle Clinical Pharmacists Have to Win
I was pleased to see an opinion article by Jeff Shaw, recently published in Pharmacy News. Basically, he was outlining how the pharmacy landscape had changed since 1996 where his pharmacy students at that time thought the class titled “Clinical Pharmacy” was one more designed for hospital pharmacists. He said: “Fifteen years on the whole…