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Clinical Services – What Patients Will Pay For
Pharmacists have always been well regarded by their patients for their ability to deliver health literacy programs, over the counter in semi-private spaces in roughly three to five minute segments. Generally, this service has been delivered free of charge and it has formed a nearly invisible component of “core” business. Only invisible because it was free,…
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Pathology Services – Better Options for Community Pharmacy
The recent pressure applied by the AMA and the RACGP in respect of the Sigma / Sonic Healthcare Project, to offer paid pathology tests through the AMCAL franchise must be bordering on unacceptable conduct under the Australian Trade Practices Act. The medical profession is looking and acting more like a cartel in every respect and…
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Pain, anxiety and depression, memory issues
Do we really understand what quality-of-life affects pain has on a person who we see regularly for their opioids? Really? Findings published in the Journal of Affective Disorders related to a survey of adults with anxiety or a mood disorder showed that over half cope with chronic pain. It seems that the dual burden of…
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Statins are for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease….really?
Well, well, well…….even pharmacy publications are now casting doubts over the effectiveness of statin therapy in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. What does this mean to the pharmacist when a patient asks “do I really need to take this medicine for my cholesterol?” and goes on to describe a fuzzy memory, aching muscles and generally…
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Dementia – can we educate and reduce risk?
At the inaugural Swisse Preventative Health Symposium held in Melbourne last Friday, I was privileged to hear a fascinating address by Professor David Smith, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford on “the role of nutrition in the prevention of cognitive impairment”. He classes dementia as a disease – not an inevitable part of ageing and certainly…
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Guardrails – Why they Need Continual Analysis and exist with a Balanced Direction
Guardrails “A large, freshly-paved parking lot has no boundaries. You can drive in any direction, free to speed to your destination. But once there’s more than a few cars driving, traffic stops. It’s too risky, there are too many uncertainties. A car could come at you from any direction, and so we crawl. Flow is…
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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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Micro-practice – Future Direction for Pharmacy
I2P has long proposed that pharmacy attracts two types of consumers – customers and patients. A little reflection will resolve this issue because clearly, customers will be attracted to the more commercialised aspects of pharmacy that compete with retailing in general, and the reason why pharmacists see their major competitors as supermarkets and variety stores.…
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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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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…