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Have we lost our therapeutic gaze?
How often do we listen quickly to a request, or to a brief description of some symptom picture? Do we really give our patients our 100% focus, and dismiss the temptation to avert our gaze from that patient in front of you to catch the attention of another person? I hear similar things from patients…
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Social Justice Programs – An Opportunity for a Patient Engagement and Health Literacy Expansion
Now that Location Rules have been made more certain through enabling legislation, it provides a level of certainty in respect of investing in services which would provide a community benefit, that in turn, could eventually be funded through government along the already familiar experience of a public/private partnership. i2P has previously expressed the opinion that…
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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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How did we go?
The codeine debacle has come and gone, and I’m not sure if our profession has come out of this squeaky clean. Judging by the number of media queries around the place, it’s timely to look back and see if this issue could have been handled better. And those enquiries and still coming. In retrospect, might…
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Pro Bono Pharmacy Services Create a Social Dividend
Pharmacists have always embraced a culture where service provision for health problems have been provided free of charge to local communities, while the physical product that resulted as a solution to those health problems attracted a monetary value. In contrast, GP’s charged for their services (consultations) and basically avoided selling products. Given that pharmacists and…
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Are your patients involved in a clinical trial?
A 90-year-old patient of mine has given me two invitations sent to her by her surgery and signed by her GP, to participate in the STAREE trial. She has (one year ago) diagnosed early-onset Alzheimer’s and was unsuccessfully given one of the usual drugs which worsened her mental state. Interestingly, before that prescription was offered,…
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Scotland’s Pharmacist Practitioner Champions
Perhaps it is because of my Scottish heritage, but I am continually dawn to the Scottish business model for community pharmacy, funded and developed in a genuine partnership between community pharmacists and government. One of its lesser publicised components is the funding of “Practitioner Champions”. It’s not a lot of money (£300,000 funding for this year),…
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No Evidence? ….Who’s kidding whom?
I had the privilege last week of speaking on both days at the 4th Annual National Institute of Integrative Medicine Symposium in Melbourne. Twenty-five International and Australian speakers presented the latest evidence-based research, therapies, treatments and innovative technologies. The topic list contained many of the issues our patients are confronting each day: Cancer: Integrative Oncology,…
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The Productivity Commission Recommendation to decouple pharmacists from dispensing mirrors a progressive Scottish community pharmacy culture
Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) is the organisation which represents community pharmacy owners throughout Scotland in almost every aspect of their working lives, and is the voice of these vital healthcare professionals north of the English Border, as they deliver pharmaceutical care to the people of Scotland. It is therefore, the Scottish equivalent of the Pharmacy…