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A National Community Pharmacy Minor Ailment Program – Scotland is there, Australia is where?
The UK has long been a beacon, lighting the way for pharmacists to be fully integrated into the healthcare team through clinical expertise. Scotland in particular has been very successful in gaining political support and recognition for pharmacy expertise, actual and potential. Community pharmacy in the UK and Australia has long been a first resource…
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A Sensible Community Pharmacy & GP Collaboration
In a win for commonsense, a professional collaboration between community pharmacists and local GP’s coupled with a simultaneous a solution for a major public health problem, a mutually respectful system has been piloted in the County of Staffordshire in the UK. And patients involved in the pilot study have documented high levels of satisfaction, simply because…
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Can we make a difference on mental health?
It’s Men’s Health Week, and I’m sure that you are aware of the shocking statistics surrounding depression in men. The reasons why men seem to be so vulnerable are debated constantly, but statistics don’t lie. We pharmacists are in a rather privileged position to help. Or, on the other hand, we can decide not to…
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Social Justice Programs – An Opportunity for a Patient Engagement and Health Literacy Expansion
Now that Location Rules have been made more certain through enabling legislation, it provides a level of certainty in respect of investing in services which would provide a community benefit, that in turn, could eventually be funded through government along the already familiar experience of a public/private partnership. i2P has previously expressed the opinion that…
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OMNS – Middle Ear Infection in Infants and Children
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service: Middle Ear Infection in Infants and Children by Ralph Campbell, MD We call those big flaps on each side of our heads “ears”; so where is the middle ear? “Middle ear” refers to the medical terminology in which there are three parts: The external ear, the middle ear – a space bordered…
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Pro Bono Pharmacy Services Create a Social Dividend
Pharmacists have always embraced a culture where service provision for health problems have been provided free of charge to local communities, while the physical product that resulted as a solution to those health problems attracted a monetary value. In contrast, GP’s charged for their services (consultations) and basically avoided selling products. Given that pharmacists and…
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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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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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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?…
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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…