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Issue 29: August 2004 |
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Also available for download in: PDF Format or Zipped PDF Format
From the desk of the editor - Introducing current ideas, perspectives and issues, to the profession of pharmacy
Welcome
to the August edition of i2P E-Magazine.
We were well
pleased with the response to our new format and received many compliments.
Our focus remains
constant, in that we will continue to discuss and report on issues
of Information Technology, pharmacy organization and development,
practice innovation, workplace reform and human resource issues,
education at all levels and all areas of communications and marketing.
Neil Johnston - Management Consultant Perspective
One
of the original thrusts of the Wilkinson Report (now five years
old) was that community pharmacy was too homogenous, and that there
was a need to evolve a range of different and competitive pharmacy
models.
A direction was
certainly set by Wilkinson in the highlighting of medical centre
pharmacies, corporate pharmacies and Friendly Society pharmacies
as desirable models.
Initiatives were
also highlighted that would free up the marketplace, and included
having pharmacy boards “butt-out” of the business end of pharmacy,
and concentrate on simply protecting the profession.
Also recommended
were the abandonment of the approval number system (which has severely
restricted the ability of new pharmacies to emerge), and the abandonment
of premises registration (a mechanism to prevent alliances with
non-pharmacy businesses).
Rollo Manning - A Regular Column Reporting the News Behind the News
This
Month:
*
Election time promises
*
Media coverage of medicine issues
*
Ownership frenzy continues
*
Work load debate
*
My quote of the month
Neil Retallick - A Friendly Society Perspective
The
extent to which the Pharmacy Channel is playing catch-up football
against the major grocers hit home to me last week in a conversation
with a pharmacist working with a group of independent pharmacists/owners.
In the conversation
it was revealed that this group was asking its suppliers to pay
for off location displays and gondola ends – a radical initiative
by an innovative pharmacy group.
The Grocery channel
has been charging its suppliers for gondola ends and off location
displays for decades.
Ken Stafford - A Consultant Pharmacist Perspective
One
of the advantages I enjoy as a member of the Public Service is access
to the ubiquitous, much maligned, Media Monitoring Service that all
governments employ to keep them informed of what issues are making
it into the media.
The report I find
most useful is a list of health related stories, appearing in Australian
daily newspapers, that hits my e-mail in-box each morning.
All of the capital
city dailies are covered so I get a fair sort of idea what people
are reading about health matters.
Con Berbatis - A Pharmacy Researcher Perspective
Editor's
Note: One of the great challenges facing pharmacy practice researchers
and national pharmacy strategists is to quantify the health and economic
contributions of pharmacists at the local, regional, national and
international levels.
In Part 1 of his occasional series for the i2P named "Quantifying
pharmacy's contribution to population health" , Con Berbatis
reviews international health data for its relevance to the future
of pharmacy practice in Australia.
Pat Gallagher - An IT Consultant Perspective
Please
believe me (and no applause required), but sometimes what goes round
comes around. Meaning that I don’t wish to sound like a misunderstood
visionary.
Even so, sometimes
the blue-sky predictions come close to being just so – true.
Almost three
years ago I wrote the third article in what is now a nineteen-edition
effort for this esteemed publication.
It was entitled:
“If it is outside the door – you should use it”
Around that time,
August 2001, I had just finished a small research job.
Although I could
not use the data I had obtained in the article, I used the general
outcomes to gratuitously advise you all to embrace broadband telecommunication
connections, for your pharmacy, sooner than later.
Les Brener - A Digital Imaging Perspective
At
the PMA Convention in Darling Harbour in June, presentations were
given by the major photofinishing companies.
One of the presenters
was Peter Kololmyjec of Fujifilm (formerly Hanimex) and subsequently,
he and the author have had an in-depth discussion, a summary of
which follows.
Mark Coleman - Medical Centre Pharmacist Perspective
The
future for the pharmacy at Nguiu, Bathurst Island is not looking
good as the impact of the government taking over the health service
starts to bite.
The owner of the
pharmacy, Tiwi Health Board, was declared insolvent by Directors
at a meeting in September 2003, and a Voluntary Administrator was
appointed.
The Nguiu Pharmacy
was owned by the health board and with its own Approval Number showed
the way in providing pharmacy services to a remote Aboriginal community.
Chris Arblaster, PhD - A Consumer Self-Care Perspective
Complementary
medicine means to complete, or to make whole.
In basic terms,
complementary medicines are usually a vitamin, mineral, herbal,
homoeopathic or aromatherapy type product.
In an individual
sense, complementary medicine seeks to complete the individual,
by making them whole or well. In a broader sense, it seeks to complement
the benefit that conventional medicine is able to make to the community.
Until a few years
ago complementary medicine was also called alternative medicine
and was defined as ‘unconventional medicine’.
Val Johanson - A Complementary Healthcare Perspective
Pharmacists
and consumers can be confident that complementary medicines sold
legally in Australia are among the best quality and safest in the
world.
The use of AUST
L or AUST R numbers on the labels of Complementary Medicines is
an easy and obvious way to identify which products have been registered
for supply in Australia and have been manufactured under the pharmaceutical
manufacturing standards detailed in the Code of Good Manufacturing
Practice (GMP).
This means that
the products have been produced under essentially the same quality
control standards as pharmaceutical drugs.
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