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Your Future Pharmacy – there are choices
Pharmacies have always existed in different formats to give customer or patient choices. Physical size has been one of these determinants, but does size really matter? Pharmacy, as an industry has relied on the PBS as being the centre of its universe. In so doing, pharmacists have skewed pharmacy practice to becoming overwhelmingly geared towards…
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So you want to collaborate? – a US experience
Collaboration between doctors and pharmacists is not a new thought, and when performed correctly and ethically, it works well for both sides. But mostly this is an exception, it only seems to work if the pharmacist takes up the role of being a second class citizen with floor-mat privileges. It is simply a power play…
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Basic Patient Engagement
The term “Patient Engagement” is appearing in pharmacy media at an increasing rate. But what is meant by this term and is there more than one form of patient engagement? The quick answer is that the term is not new, but has been expanded to include patient sharing between various health professions. Patient engagement has…
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Let The Games Begin – Sussan Ley to centre-stage please
Often, in the turmoil of disinformation that screams from the various mastheads of mainstream media and the “butt” covering by those targeted, it is little wonder that we pharmacists get confused. While we recognise each other as being part of a “family” we are definitely not united because of the power politics of the day…
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Pharmacy Guild of Australia is no friend of Community Clinical Pharmacists – ANAO
On the 5th of March a report by the Australian National Audit Office was tabled in Federal Parliament with 257 pages of analysis into the administration by the Department of Health of the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement (5CPA). I am not someone who reads these reports every day, but even to my untrained eye there…
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Unprecedented Attacks on PGA Post-ANAO Report
“Australian pharmacy is in a death throe whether you are an accredited consultant or a community pharmacist and the PGA has been the spectacular lobbying body that has brought us to this point.” This is just a sample of one of the many comments currently circulating since the publication of the ANAO audit report after…
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Doctor Groups and CHF Deliver Collective Criticism of Pharmacy
About forty years ago I found myself in a vigorous debate with Greg Haines, the pharmacy historian. He made the claim that pharmacy had never initiated major changes to its professional foundations and that such change had always been initiated by the medical profession, or the government or both in unison. These days when doctors…
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News Ltd – QUM – Profitless Prosperity – and get in line to join the chorus of dissent
The “profitless prosperity” that those millionaire pharmacists, owning pharmacies they are currently trying to keep afloat, have my sympathy. They are being savaged by the millionaire Murdoch Press who are deliberately stirring up and distorting images of pharmacy that are blatantly false – and they know it! What does it say about their professionalism? As…
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Post ANAO Report – the way ahead.
In his State of the Union address on 20 January, 2015, President Barrack Obama said: “I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine—one that delivers the right treatment at the right time.” And crucial to achieving that reality, said experts who addressed the 2014…
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Science teaches us that we must see to believe, but we must also believe in order to see!
The current ruling on homeopathy defies logical reasoning, bearing in mind that just 60 studies were taken into account of 1300 submitted Systematic reviews typically find a lack of definite positive evidence of efficacy, and recommend further research. 49% of systematic research reviews on conventional medicine reach similar “inclusive” conclusions, 96% recommend further research. (El…