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Bypass the AMA if Collaborative Ventures are Required for Unmet Patient Needs
It is becoming apparent that the medical profession leadership has clearly “lost the plot” in direction-setting, patient engagement and collaborative health when you analyse statements attributable to AMA leaders at their recent national conference. Cries that GP’s feel “under assault” through pharmacists encroaching into “their” territory of vaccinations and sick certificates, with no mention of better…
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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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The Medical Profession Leadership – Is Their Pharmacy Rant a cry for a Direction?
The medical profession has always promoted itself as being the leading health modality with all other health formats and modalities being inferior. It has reinforced that vision through the lens of adopting power politics as its primary marketing strategy. This meant that instead of being respectful and gaining the collaborative support of all other health…
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Professional Discretion Restored – Much More than Homeopathic Product Sales
The Australian Government has made a commonsense decision to allow pharmacists to continue the sale of homeopathic products for those patients who find they derive benefit from their use. The actual extract from the government response to the homeopathy issue in the final King Review Report states: “Recommendation 4-4: Sale of Homeopathic Products in PBS…
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We are Judged Within Seven Seconds of Meeting Somebody
We are head down, tail up, working our way through a pile of prescriptions across the day, striving to use the skills that we are famous and respected for. Some of the people waiting for scripts will be people we already know. Others will be brand new patients, who we are engaging with for the…
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Pharmacist Investment Opportunity – Medical Cannabis Growing & Manufacturing
Medical cannabis and its health market potential was first brought to the attention of Australian pharmacists by i2P as far back as 2011. In that year medical cannabis was promoted by i2P as a potential market for pharmacy, and with the utilisation of pharmacist health literacy skills, community pharmacy could become the natural hub to…
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“Recommendation Prescriptions”
How many times in an average day would you discuss a minor ailment with a patient? Do you aim for a quick sale, or do you really engage and help with meaningful solutions? What about considering your own “script pad” with your name and pharmacy details imprinted, and on which you list your solutions, in…
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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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Health by Stealth!
Are we being complicit in accepting the gradual lowering of thresholds for various treatments? There’s some interesting discussions at the moment on the Cholesterol Treatment Trialist’s Collaboration. This is an international group of doctors and statisticians that includes Australia’s NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre. This collaboration seems to have a dogmatic approach to advocating the wider…