-
Evidence Based Design Will Encourage Patient Outcomes
A pharmacy environment is a complex one of patients, customers, products and services. It is a little understood environment because evidence surrounding its structure and presentation is sparse. All the elements require integration. It’s one thing to spruce up a space aesthetically, but it’s equally important to address the underlying conditions to support the experience…
-
Ice Pack for Injections Courtesy 3D Printing
Rice University undergraduates have developed a quick and easy way to numb the skin, making shots virtually pain-free. And it could be a value enhancement that might differentiate pharmacy vaccination clinics from those provided by all other health professionals. Getting the flu shot is one of the many rituals that comes once a year, inoculating…
-
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…
-
The Unmet Needs of Cancer
How can we understand and meet the unfulfilled needs of our patients who have been through cancer therapy? Recent research shows that many cancer patients face physical and mental challenges that impair their quality of life well beyond the five-year survival milestone. These problems and challenges can vary by the type of cancer and the…
-
Wondrous Wiggly Worms!
Human evolution and parasitic infections have run hand-in-hand since antiquity. Humans can be hosts to nearly 300 species of parasitic worms. Some cause death, suffering and economic loss in both developing and developed nations and research is ongoing to develop vaccines for these infections. Can some worms offer health benefits? People become infected by consuming…
-
The Intergenerational Report – One for the Nation and One for Pharmacy?
The 2015 Intergenerational Report projects a range of issues that will have interest and impact on the pharmacy profession. It has taken a few attempts to get the Intergenerational Report to a reasonable degree of acceptance because of previous high levels of inaccuracy. Those high-levels of inaccuracy impacted the thinking and projections of government in…
-
Worries about clogged arteries?
The “intima media” is the middle portion of the arteries that becomes inflamed, and fills up with plaque comprised of oxidized fats, and immune cells and their debris, in the condition known colloquially as “blocked arteries”. Published in Clinical Nutrition in 2014, and titled “Pomegranate juice consumption for 3 years by patients with carotid artery…
-
Saving Health – and Pharmacy if you can find it
I don’t know whether this is unique just to me or because I have a long and clear memory of pharmaceutical events since my entry to the profession in 1956. But I get very angry when I see a national TV program supposedly involving all of “health” where none of the participants are pharmacists! Nada!…
-
Cocoa and Cognition
Editor’s Note: As someone who consumes dark chocolate 85% I would suggest that a close look at the label is required, for many brands are still using the sweetener aspartame (or variations of the molecule) which endangers cognitive health. Some brands are now appearing on the market sweetened with Stevia, which is quite safe. Cocoa…
-
Fish oil – is it on the nose?
Considerable confusion and many unsubstantiated beliefs abound when it comes to fish oil supplements. An estimated one in four Australians currently take them for a wide range of conditions, even though good research is unconvincing. However, there are suggestions that increased doses of fish oil might provide health benefits. What are fish oils – and…