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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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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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The Patient Proposition
I am wondering if there are any pharmacists out there who have ever created a written proposal to recruit patients to your practice. The reason I ask is that so many pharmacists in their communications with each other or with other health professionals, talk in terms of having “customers”, with the word “patient” appearing spasmodically…
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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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Do you give out your mobile number?
Contrary to what many others think, allowing a patient access to your mobile phone won’t cause an avalanche of irrelevant and annoying calls about trivial matters. However, if you have a patient who might need reassurance after hours, your mobile phone will cement a relationship that will never be challenged. People with life-sapping disease states…
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The Safe Vaccination Debate – 1. Banning Unvaccinated Kids May Have Consequences 2. How Plumbing (not vaccines) Eradicated Disease 3. Aluminium in Vaccines Highly Toxic 4. Overvaccination 5. The Judy Wilyman Report
1. Professor Raina MacIntyre – Banning unvaccinated kids from child care may have unforeseen consequences OPINION: The federal government’s push for all state and territories to ban unvaccinated children from child care is a coercive measure that may disadvantage working parents and their children, and may have other unintended consequences. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says unifying…
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Fracture – are we involved enough?
The Journal of Internal Medicine has published some views on hip fracture. The statistics behind this unfortunate and common injury is ignored as we dispense bisphosphonates to many of our female patients – fearful of the adverse effects after reading about them, and fretting after getting feedback from their friends. Do we do enough when…
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Orthomolecular News – Niacin Rescues Cannibalistic Hamsters The Historical Significance of 1940s Mandatory Niacin Enrichment
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, February 28, 2017 by W. Todd Penberthy, PhD In a newly published research study, Tissier and colleagues at the Universite ‘ de Strasbourg, France, identified wild hamsters that were eating primarily corn monoculture diets and exhibiting siblicide and maternal infanticide. Cannibalism was one of the theories for the decline of their…
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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…