It’s that time of the year. To reflect upon the past twelve months. I will focus on the professional aspect of that question. In our work lives, could we have done things better, both for our customers and for ourselves? Has your drug dealing been all it could have been?

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Instead of trying to come up with my own descriptions of drug recovery/rehab programs, I thought I’d borrow some I’ve come across, this is not original work, and you can google a phrase if you need the reference, but it’s food for thought, however, keep i in mind to speak to your General Practitioner, local health professional, or local health clinic for more information and to discuss your individual needs.

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I recently was involved in a discussion around whether the old style dispensaries should be changing to something with less barriers to the public, both from seeing what we do and with speaking to us. A chain in Australia experimented with that and I explain why it didn’t work. However, the practicality of dealing with people barking their drug orders to you, as well as the advent of robotic dispensing, things may change again.

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How many times have you wanted to call the doctor and say “Seriously dude, really? Is that what you wrote?” While I have avoid saying “dude” in my professional conversations, that about captures what goes through my mind. Doctor’s handwriting – this is an old and much discussed topic of frustration, but still worth a mention. Just because it’s frustrating, yes that’s one reason, and I like to complain, but also because the chance of an incorrect drug being selected also increases.

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This was what I wrote in regard to a specific post on an Australian health blog Croaky. That’s if the comment is approved, it still may be under moderation. I post it because it’s an argument we’ve all heard before, and it really applies to all short sighted views of pharmacy, particularly from our fellow professionals in the healthcare industry who should know better. It always seems to come back to “why do I have to wait so long for my prescription” and “you sell dodgy supplements and bad diet products” etc. I don’t know why I bothered to write such a lengthy response, but I did it on the spur of the moment and thought I’d share it with you.

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“C’mon, can’t any of you give me some codeine!? Seriouly, I’ve got a prescription at home…C’MON!”

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Pharmacy News has posted an article which you should definitely check out. While I am not an avid civil libertarian, I think the innocent until proven guilty clause should apply, even to the Pharmacy Board of Australia’s guidelines.

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A Masseratti, now that would be nice…

Just some buddies from pharmacy around their ride…oh no, wait, that’s the cast of Entourage. My bad. (more…)

Ok, now, which catagory do you and your pharmacy fit into?

“Yeah, this bottle is brown and stuff. Did you totally check out my shelf behind, you could eat your dinner off it.” (more…)

Here’s an interesting article from the Canadian Pharmacist’s Journal regarding establishing a vaccine practice on site. While this type of practice is not advancing in Australia, there are places such as Canada which are moving ahead.

The article mentions the advantages to the patient/customer as well as the pharmacist for this practice. Firstly it acts as a point of call for education and information particularly about travel vaccines. It is a convenient place and (probably) easy to schedule the vaccination. This is of particular help if booking at the doctor’s is not able to be time with a departure date, and eases the burden on the G.P. office to take in patients for vaccinations which takes away time from those patients that have more pressing investigations needed. (more…)

To make sure I completely throw myself at every possible fad, I have also setup a Twitter account, for those that find communicating through facebook too old fashioned and labour intensive. If you’re with Telstra, you can even voice twitter, because, yeah, we managed to phase out writing, so lets do the same with typing and texting. Ah. (more…)

For those in Australia, we are familiar with large chain pharmacy companies such as National Pharmacies, Chemmart, Chemplus, Amcal and so on. Now we have (relatively) newer ones such as Chemist Warehouse, United Discount Chemists, and Priceline. There seems to be a heading in a discount marketed direction, however the originals are still keeping their same banners and general ‘non-discount’ image. Do you feel this is hurting or helping the industry by marketing pharmacies as drug warehouses. These pharmacies are still providing the same counselling and professional services, but on observer may say the outfit of the store may be diminishing the professional reputation of pharmacies. (more…)

Here’s your Oxycontin (insert mischievous laugh here) (more…)