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EDITORIAL

Electronic Transcription of Prescriptions
By Neil Johnston

The transmission of prescriptions and other electronic health records is coming closer to a reality, as a number of systems begin to evolve globally, for this purpose.
Australia is well advanced in developing such a system, which may prove to be more efficient than some of its counterparts being developed in other parts of the world, such as the U.K.
The British Journal of Pharmacy, in a recent article, states that the Department of Health wants to see three of its pilot studies in England, completed by November 2002, so that each of the systems can be fully assessed by government by April 2003.
British GPs are to be in a position to transmit electronic prescriptions also by April 2003.

Drug Abuse Should be High in Priority
By Rollo Manning

Social consequences of substance abuse are a precursor to ill health. Pharmacists should be as interested in curbing the social determinants of ill health as much as they are looking at blood pressure and blood sugar.
No matter how much money is put into treating ill health, it will not do anything to stop the growth of ill health caused by some socially accepted behavioural practices.
Pharmacists have a role to play in the maintenance of health in the community, and especially if the health is threatened by a person abusing themselves with a chemical substance.
Be it alcohol, tobacco, opiates or benzos - the knowledge a pharmacist has of the effect these chemicals have on the body deserves attention.

Told You So!
By Ken Stafford

Don't you just hate it when you turn out to be right about the wrong thing? This thought came to me recently when my son, currently a pre-registration intern in a community pharmacy, told me about two letters the pharmacy had received during the week, one from a private health fund, the second from a major third party accident insurer. Both letters concerned changes to payment to pharmacists for prescriptions.

Continuing Pharmacist Education - Points of Interest
By Simon Rudderham

One of the most difficult components of our tremendous profession is that information seems to go out of date so quickly and easily. New theories are developed and tested as to what best models of practice are, and as to what first line therapy should become. For each feature article in each pharmacy journal, one hour should be dedicated to its reading and revision. One could work a forty hour week just sifting through the major Australian Pharmacy/Health journals, and for those of us who have sparse attention spans, nothing seems to sink in beyond paragraph three.

Locum Pharmacists - An Underutilised Resource
By Ayron Teed

And, no. I am not joking!
In this edition I will explain my very extensive experience with locum pharmacists.
In August five years ago I was pressured by the Chief Executive Officer of the Health District to purchase the community pharmacy at Rainbow. The pharmacy was in a remote Mallee township of 600 residents, and serviced a pharmacy depot at Jeparit 30+ km away (with about 400 residents).
The total population serviced by the pharmacy would be around 2000 - 3000.
The pharmacy was to be closed. The residents were devastated.
The next step would be the loss of the doctor, followed by the two hospitals.
I was a locum/consultant hospital pharmacist.
I hadn't practised in community pharmacy since my apprenticeship years in the olden days!
I lived three hours away. The pharmacy would have to be totally manned with locum pharmacists.
Now, five years later those pharmacists who said that it couldn't possibly be done have been proved wrong.

Paracetamol and Supermarkets
By Karalyn Huxhagen

The recent case of a teenage boy dying from complications of acute paracetamol toxicity has brought questions from the coroner on how easy it is to die from a simple pain relieving medication
"A coroner is expected to recommend that paracetamol be removed from supermarket shelves and sold only in pharmacies, after a teenage boy died from an overdose of the drug.
Wade Dunn, 13, was administered 31 grams of paracetamol over 14 days in two NSW hospitals while convalescing from a routine procedure.
Draft recommendations circulated by the coroner Jan Stevenson to lawyers involved in Wade's inquest ask the NSW Department of Health to consider restricting the availability of paracetamol products to pharmacies.
The recommendations, referred to in written submissions made to Orange Local Court yesterday, also call for a committee of experts to review the current "use and abuse of paracetamol, to establish realistic guidelines in order to prevent the potential for liver failure in children".

Pharmacy and Social Responsibility
By Jon Aldous

Recent events in the workplace have sent me to the internet, looking for examples of social responsibility from employers, in relation to the health and wellbeing of their own staff.
Like most pharmacies, my workplace has a high proportion of working parents who have chosen to juggle family and career.
I never cease to be amazed at their depths of stamina and resolve!
However, problems can arise when there are no options for caring for children when they are ill.
It reached a point where we may have lost two or three staff on one day to care for their respective children.
As all the staff involved were close friends we negotiated a settlement allowing one staff member to mind all the children, freeing up two of the staff for work that day.
Like in any pharmacy, losing three staff on one day would have left an unreasonable burden on the remaining staff.

Challenges of Changing the Culture
By Heather Pym

Working in an inner city Division of General Practice with over 60% of the GP practices being single Dr practices supported by a receptionist, many having been so for many years and now part of the establishment poses some interesting challenges when it comes to suggesting new innovations.
The MBS item number 900, the DMMR (HMR if you like) is posing one of the challenges I mentioned.
In GP land there seems to be three streams of reaction to a medication management review for their patient conducted in the home to date (early days).

A National Pharmacy Act- Is It Possible?
By Peter Sayers

Time flies, and it must be approaching three years since the Wilkinson Report was published after a fairly intensive review into pharmacy practices and levels of competition.
Apart from the pages of this magazine, there has been very limited continuing discussion and comment.
The CoAG working group had to finish its commentary before the states could harmonise their coordinated response, which was hopefully to encourage a universal Pharmacy Act to replace existing models currently in place in the various states and territories.

The Pharmacy World Beyond Australia.
By Andrew Snow

As you may, or may not know, over the last month I was travelling overseas and had the one of the greatest experiences of my life.
My time began in Lincoln, which is a city in the UK. I worked for two weeks at the Lincoln County Hospital, a large hospital with a broad range of patients.
The pharmacy department allowed me to venture throughout the hospital, and really get a feel for what the pharmacists do there.
Each day, I had a set schedule with written learning objectives making each day efficient, and action packed.

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