Friday 27 August 2010

Who's responsible?

No, not a comment on the responsible pharmacist regulations, but a salutary warning to all pharmacist prescribers from PJ Online and to be published in next week's issue of Clinical Pharmacist.

Hospital pharmacist and independent prescriber Christine Dixon describes her caution when asked to prescribe simple remedies by nurses. Refusing to accept such requests at face value she insists on making her own assessment of the patient. She describes two occasions on which nurses asked for antacids or glycerol suppositories to be prescribed to treat the symptoms of previously undiagnosed gastric bleeds. In each case, the patient ended up in the high dependency unit.

"I have often seen doctors prescribe on demand, but I prefer to check the situation first," she says.

To take part in our "Search to win" competition this week (for details see below) find the name of the first medicine to be authorised in Europe for compassionate use and the citation for our report of it.

Michael Thompson
Editor, PJ Online

News this week

Clinical news

Read - and comment on - all our news online

How to...

. . . enter the PJ Online "Search to win" competition - Answers to the competition should be sent to editor@pharmj.org.uk with "Search competition" in the subject line. Each week, one winner will receive a GBP25 voucher for Marks and Spencer or Amazon.co.uk.

The winner will be selected at random at 10am each Friday for the duration of the competition, and announced via the next newsletter.

Congratulations to Lesley Perkins, who correctly found that the date on which PJ Online reported the discontinuation of 5g tubes of Adcortyl in Orabase was 16 July 2009.

Article of the week

Trends in NHS funding: additional private care

When a patient is unable to receive a potentially beneficial treatment on the NHS, he or she is entitled to pay for it privately without losing the right to NHS care. Such is the essence of "additional private care".

The third in a series of articles on NHS funding looks at how people can pay for treatment that the NHS will niot provide.

Pharmaceutical Care Awards

If you ran a pharmaceutical services-based project last year and want to blow your trumpet about it you have just three weeks left in which to enter for the Pharmaceutical Care Awards 2009 jointly sponsored by PJ Publications and GlaxoSmithKline.

Judging will be carried out by a panel of national representatives from a range of pharmacy sectors comprising Catherine Duggan, Terry Maguire, Jonathan Mason, Harry McQuillan, Cath O'Brien, Linda Stephens and Martin Stephens.

The finalists' entries will be converted to posters and teams will be invited to present their posters at an event to be held in London on 18 November 2010.

Learning and Development

Plugging a prescribing hole with formulation and compounding skills

What can you do when an effective medicine is discontinued and alternatives are just not the same?

Ray Bunn, a community and palliative care pharmacist, describes how his pharmacy went back to basics to maintain the supply of a preparation for mouth ulceration in palliative care patients and avoid his local hospice having to pay the high cost of the product as a commercially procured unlicensed special.

Ulcerative colitis: prescribing considerations and CPD

With over a dozen mesalazine products available for ulcerative colitis, choosing between them can be difficult. Anja St.Clair Jones discusses some of the factors that prescribers should consider.

Choice should not be based on cost alone, she says, but should take into account current management strategies and adherence.

If you have any questions after reading this article, you can Ask the expert until 6 September?

Are you ready...

... to treat summer feet?

Padding around on the hot sand, paddling in an azure pool and ditching your sensible shoes for a pair of flip-flops is the stuff of summer holiday dreams, but can leave behind some foot-related nightmares.

Be it verrucas, warts, blisters, athlete's foot or fungal nail infections, this month's "Are you ready...?" helps your pharmacy team gear up for the hobbling, post-holiday footfall.

And don't forget that you can always find resources to help you prepare to assist people with other enquiries by taking a look at our Are you ready... section for previous topics.

Comment and opinion

Delusional parasitosis
Not such a simple request after all
US healthcare and the NHS: Is the NHS under appreciated?
Week 1-4
Weird ADRs: Capecitabine and fingerprints
Would you like some electric fries?

Do you agree with our writers? You can discuss these views on PJ Online.

Visit PJ Careers to search for your perfect job

Missed your issue of the PJ?

See all live vacancies from the past three weeks and apply online at www.pjcareers.com.

You can upload your CV and set up job alerts that notify you when a job matching your requirements has been posted to the site.

PJ Careers will help you find your perfect job.

And finally...

... statistics released by the Higher Education Funding Council for England suggest that around 96 per cent of pharmacy graduates get a graduate level job. The numbers are not precise because the HEFCE looks at pharmacy degrees together with pharmacology and toxicology in its statistics, but it seems reasonable to assume that any pharmacy graduate not working in pharmacy is doing so by choice rather than perforce. So, if you want a job, get a pharmacy degree. But then if you're reading this you probably already have, or soon will have, both!