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Dementia – can we educate and reduce risk?
At the inaugural Swisse Preventative Health Symposium held in Melbourne last Friday, I was privileged to hear a fascinating address by Professor David Smith, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford on “the role of nutrition in the prevention of cognitive impairment”. He classes dementia as a disease – not an inevitable part of ageing and certainly…
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Health Literacy – A Concept for a Valid Direction for Community Pharmacy
Recently, I had a conversation with a health professional involved in the public health system. Research had emerged that large pockets of populations were experiencing epidemic levels of chronic illness such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. These population pockets correlated with areas of low socio-economic households where people had generally poor diets and…
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Guardrails – Why they Need Continual Analysis and exist with a Balanced Direction
Guardrails “A large, freshly-paved parking lot has no boundaries. You can drive in any direction, free to speed to your destination. But once there’s more than a few cars driving, traffic stops. It’s too risky, there are too many uncertainties. A car could come at you from any direction, and so we crawl. Flow is…
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Complementary Medicine – Are You In or Are you Out?
I’m tired of the same old, same old criticisms of complementary medicines being thrown by sensationalizing media like 4Corners and the like. Mind you, some of their research shows that some pharmacists are happy to bank the dollars generated by the slick marketing of these products by a variety of companies. Where do you sit…
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A4M Proposes a $1 trillion health cost save for US – why not Australia?
The American Academy for Anti-Ageing (A4M) is a medical group researching and treating the ageing process through utilising the concept of Integrative Medicine. They have come up with a simplified 10 point proposal designed to slash major costs from the health bill in the US – they say reductions of up to $1 trillion are…
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Developing a Single Patient View
From the last business cycle to the current version, pharmacists and community pharmacies have undergone some profound experiences and rapid change. The transition to now is leaving in its wake a sense of indecision and while many opportunities have arisen to improve pharmacist skills and community pharmacy development, only a small number of talented individuals…
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Micro-practice – Future Direction for Pharmacy
I2P has long proposed that pharmacy attracts two types of consumers – customers and patients. A little reflection will resolve this issue because clearly, customers will be attracted to the more commercialised aspects of pharmacy that compete with retailing in general, and the reason why pharmacists see their major competitors as supermarkets and variety stores.…
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Value Over Profit ?
When pharmacy comes under financial pressure it always looks for a “quick fix” and it usually takes the form of concentrating resources and focus into various retail channels of activity. Even though pharmacists are criticised for expanding their retail offering and daring to create survival profits, it is a necessary activity to ensure that the…
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Coincidence?
Medical media recently has highlighted the bad news for back pain sufferers – analgesic don’t work! As reported in 6minutes newsletter to GPs, “NSAIDs such as ibuprofen are no better than placebo. And perhaps do more harm than good.” The news release goes on to say that “previous research has already demonstrated that paracetamol is…
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What can we learn from Thyroid Pharmacist?
It was just over a year ago, when I was starting out in a busy suburban pharmacy as a professional services pharmacist, when I noticed something a bit weird…literally every second person I spoke with for about a full week was on thyroxine tablets. I stared back at these patients. A lot of them were…