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Danish Malpractice System Provides Integrity, Safety, and an Education Resource
It is depressingly common and it has recently happened here in Australia. A patient leaves hospital, or a doctor’s surgery or from a pharmacy with a medication such as Methotrexate with instructions stating “one tablet daily” instead of “one tablet weekly”. The patient is damaged or dies, and there begins the problem of who to…
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Australian Vaccination Policy and Autism/Chronic Illness
Since I publicised my graduation in December 2015 there have been many inaccurate stories written about my research in the mainstream media. Most of these stories and comments have been made by journalists who have presented statements from my thesis out of context and used labels such as ‘conspiracy theory’ and anti-vaccination’ to influence the…
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Australian Research Illustrates a Reason for Irrational Skeptic Behaviour
In last week’s edition some of our staff writers put together an article that featured Australian research on Asperger’s syndrome and the behaviours associated with that condition. That article was titled “People with high autistic tendencies see the world very differently, and a Swinburne magazine summary of their research is found here: What started out…
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The Formal Documents Required for a Functioning Pharmacy Business
Many pharmacy businesses (even some of the larger variety) often do not conduct important aspects of their business by having basic contracts/agreements in place for each activity. You do not have to be a legal expert, when often all that is required is an exchange of letters confirming details of your mutual discussion and your understanding…
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MedsASSIST May Prove To Be A Useful Long Term Monitoring Tool
The MedsASSIST system, designed to monitor pharmacy sales of codeine products, has reached the stage of progressing to stage two of a pilot, involving approximately 150 pharmacies in the Newcastle and North Queensland regions. The system is being introduced because government was intending to reschedule codeine to schedule 4 (prescription only) status. Addiction to prescription…
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Managed Alcohol Programs – (MAP). Slow progress of effective hostel protocol to save money, suffering and dignity of our most marginalised citizens.
Dear Colleagues, I have been writing these summaries for many years but there is little more dramatic I can think of than the findings of three published studies and numerous other reports of allowing alcohol to alcoholics in refuges under strict supervision with psychosocial supports. I wrote enthusiastically about a Canadian study by Tiina Podymow…
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Blackmore’s New Flagship Store – Now There’s a Model for Pharmacy!
Blackmores have designed and opened an innovative flagship store that offers the complete wellbeing experience, with rooms for private consultations with qualified naturopaths, a modern ‘Mindful Ocean’ system to assess mindfulness, the Wellbeing Bar for food and drink tasting as well as offering the comprehensive Blackmores’ product range. Located on Level 5 of Westfield, Bondi Junction, the…
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Local Education –Forums to the future
As a management consultant my objective was always to delegate an owner-manager out of their business. The process usually took two years and during that period every single staff person was retrained to a different way of thinking about their workplace through on-the-job mentoring and the process of delegation. Thus, the business owners could actually take…
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Seth Godin Clarity – as applied to pharmacy
I have long been admired the mental agility of Seth Godin, the US marketing guru who was the author of an Internet transforming book titled “The Ideavirus”. Basically, he identified and predicted what has now come to pass, in that “word of mouth” would be displaced by “word of mouse”. His words reported further along…
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Panadol Osteo? Give me a break!
It’s a little hard to believe that the biggest talking point in health early in 2016 is the price rise around Panadol Osteo. This is happening at a time when the entire health (or illness) system is bursting at the seams, and the role of the pharmacist within this system is under ever-increasing scrutiny, We’re…