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A Former Community Pharmacist Now a Practice Pharmacist- We Have a Q & A With Him
Clinical service pharmacists basically find themselves as a “divided bunch” and have an unclear vision for the future. Certainly they have been derailed by having their voice taken from them by the PGA/PSA controlled Australian Association of Consultant Pharmacy (AACP), which incidentally, had its named changed from the original which had “pharmacist” in the title.…
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GM Lobby Will Damage Australian’s Health Future
On Tuesday, 9 September 2015 I tuned in to the ABC broadcast of the address given to the National Press Club , by John Entine, described as a “journalist, scholar, skeptic and GMO advocate. I have followed the genetically modified organism (GMO) debate for some years and had personally arrived at a conclusion that GM…
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Get Up Advert banned
As government becomes secretive and undemocratic and mainstream media aids the process, it generates a climate that allows for the formation of equal and opposite alternatives, and to mobilise affected communities. These manifest as a range of “whistle-blowers”, online polls and surveys, blogs published over the Internet and news aggregators that attempt to provide a…
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The Final Statistic
There is no more ‘final’ statistic regarding drug use than overdose deaths. And in England the official figures go back to Victorian times, then often involving opium, laudanum and other strong drugs including alcohol. The British Coroner’s Act of 1844 was ahead of its time and even pre-dated the famous Broad Street Pump reports of…
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Intervention skills compromised
A new study in the Medical Journal of Australia doesn’t reflect on us all that well. How’s this for a statistic? “…..of patients admitted to hospital with broken bones following a fall, 85.4% were 65 years or older and had been prescribed a falls-risk medicine”. Does this mean that at some stage, 85 out of…
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Walk-In Clinics for UK Pharmacies
UK community pharmacies are considering the adoption of a US style “walk-in” clinic that involves collaboration with clinical nurse practitioners, to ease the burden on an overstretched NHS service. Walk-in centres were more likely to be used by those aged 16-45, with women slightly more likely to attend according to a recent Monitor review. Since…
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Practice Based Pharmacy – Is it the future direction for pharmacists?
Having recently shifted house, I am still locating items long forgotten. One of the many treasures I stumbled upon was an 1890 formulary for pharmaceutical chemists, containing a myriad of formulations, for a myriad of problems and many of which I became intimately acquainted with during my apprenticeship. Formulas and directions for making Syr Ferri…
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Medibank moves to emulate US health insurers – New Funding Models Needed!
Health insurance in the US has always been a contentious issue because of its limitations and high cost. Because of the cost factor it often formed part of a benefit in a salary package with the employer, better able to access to negotiate and manage health insurance discounts. Aggregation through a multiple of employees gave economic…
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Paracetamol – not so safe?
One of the most common questions I’m often asked relates to the safety of natural medicines with warfarin therapy. Many theoretical issues occur within a test tube environment, but the word “warfarin” sends many pharmacists into a spin. Misunderstanding and misinformation about the interaction between omega-3 fish oils and warfarin has been topical since Adam…
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Everything (almost) is negotiable
Within the past few years, some of the best-known names in American industry have disappeared down the gaping maws of other companies. Other seemingly unassailable fortresses have been disassembled, and the parts sold off separately. Nothing unusual about that. If huge enterprises, some so valuable their assets exceed those of many of the world’s nations,…