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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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OMNS – Infantile Colic
An infant with colic not only is suffering from pain, but is causing great concern in parents attempting to render loving care. We can’t ask the infant to rate the pain on a scale from 1 to 10, but we know that only pain could produce such an agonizing cry that borders on screaming. We…
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Marketing Professional Services – Tactics & Strategies
Pharmacists are slowly coming to grips with the provision of professional services and are fleshing out suitable business models very cautiously. In part, this caution arises out of a sense of uncertainty because of the culture change that has to be embraced in converting what was previously an unstructured service (provided free of charge) to…
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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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Pharmacy Professional Services – the Willingness to Pay
A recent study published by ScienceDirect discusses values of pharmacy professional services and the willingness to pay by consumers. The study was based on literature reports that specifically noted a willingness to pay a community pharmacist and had value established using the method described as Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). Some analysts have used the study…
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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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An Opportunity Opens Up – Will Pharmacy Leaders Grab It?
As pharmacists and coalface health practitioners we accumulate a lot of knowledge that other health practitioners do not have access to. This is because we are the only health profession that does not require a payment from a patient to access our physical pharmacy space. In addition, pharmacy culture has always allowed pro bono professional…
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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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Scotland’s Pharmacist Practitioner Champions
Perhaps it is because of my Scottish heritage, but I am continually dawn to the Scottish business model for community pharmacy, funded and developed in a genuine partnership between community pharmacists and government. One of its lesser publicised components is the funding of “Practitioner Champions”. It’s not a lot of money (£300,000 funding for this year),…