All posts by ackersch

Pharmacists to the rescue!

Radical proposals to ease the pressures on family doctors have been proposed by the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society which could see a pharmacist in every GP surgery.

GPs and their teams are estimated to make 370 million patient consultations this year. This is 70 million more than five years ago, but as demand has risen the number of GPs in England has remained pretty much the same.

By contrast there is currently an over-supply of pharmacists, who train as clinicians for five years – only one year less than a doctor. The suggestion is that they could step in to treat patients directly at the surgery, particularly those with long term conditions and who are taking a number of different medicines.

Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the RCGP, says: “Waiting times for a GP appointment are now a national talking point. Yet we have a ‘hidden army’ of highly-trained pharmacists who could provide a solution.”

But this isn’t going to happen overnight. Your local community pharmacy will be your port of call to see a pharmacist for a while yet.

Many men are fixated about the size of their penis, but have no idea whether it is bigger or smaller than average. Their partners are probably equally ignorant!

Now a team from King’s College London and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has reviewed size measurements of over 15,000 men aged 17 and older to produce some definitive figures.

Using standard procedures, all men had the length and circumference, or girth, of their penis measured while it was flaccid and erect.

The results reveal that the average length of a flaccid penis is 9.16cm and 13.12cm when erect. The average girth is 9.31 cm when flaccid and 11.66 cm when erect. There is a small correlation between height and erect penis length.
Your local community pharmacy will, of course, offer condoms for all sizes and, these days, a variety of tastes. Emergency contraception and other sexual health services can also be accessed by asking your pharmacist.

Going into hospital or moving to a care home can be pretty disruptive in the short term to your daily routine. To add to the problem, between 30-70% of patients have an error or unintentional change to their medicines when they move from one care setting to another.

Ensuring medicines are used safety is a continual challenge, since up to 8% of unplanned admissions to hospital are due to medication issues.

If you are one of those people who want to be an active participant in your own healthcare, you can do a lot to help ensure everyone knows the correct details about your medicines. This should include:

• details of the medicines you are currently taking and the dosage
• known drug allergies and any unexpected reactions to medicines or their ingredients
• details of relevant contacts (your GP, local pharmacy and family members or carers where appropriate)

You can ask your pharmacist help you put the list together and get them to update it if your medicines change.

This information should ideally be shared within 24 hours of changing location.

If has long been a concern of doctors and pharmacists that between 30-50% of medicines that are prescribed are not taken properly. There are many reasons why this might be the case, but the bottom line is that your medicines are not going to work if you don’t take them!

Since around 15 million people in England currently take medicines for long-term conditions like asthma or high blood pressure that’s a lot of medicines going to waste, and pressure put on the NHS from illnesses which are not being treated effectively.

This is why your pharmacist might ask you if you would like a medicines use review (MUR) next time you go to the pharmacy for your repeat prescription. This is intended to be a short 15 minute conversation to establish that you are taking your medicines properly, help identify any problems you may have such as unexpected side effects, and suggest possible solutions.

It’s good to talk!

Forget the latest diet fad. There’s no “silver bullet” solution to keeping your weight down, says the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Instead it advises that taking small practical steps can help.

Limiting TV time in front of the TV to no more than two hours, walking more, and eating healthily are among the most effective ways of maintaining a healthy weight and preventing excess weight gain, it says.

Maintaining a healthy weight has become increasingly important public health issue in recent years. Over the past 20 years the number of people classed as obese has nearly doubled. Carrying extra weight increases the risk of a range of long-term conditions such as coronary heart disease, liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke.

NICE says that weight gain in adulthood is not inevitable. People should build activity into their daily lives, developing routines and habits that gradually increase the amount of their activity. They should also be encouraged to reduce how often they eat energy-dense food and drinks such as fried foods, biscuits, savoury snacks, confectionary and drinks made with full fat milk or cream.

Are you someone who takes more than four doses of medicine a day? If so it appears you are more likely to crush tablets or open capsules, potentially reducing their effectiveness, a study has revealed.

And even more worrying, almost half of those in the study (44%) did not think there would be an issue with crushing or modifying tablets. Most of those who modified their medicines didn’t seek advice from their pharmacist, instead turning to family and friends.

Had they asked their pharmacist they would have got some more sensible advice! Depending on the tablet or capsule, and the type of medicine, modifying the dosage form can lead to reduced effectiveness and increased risk of adverse effects.

For example, many tablets and capsules are film coated to prevent them disintegrating in the acid environment of the stomach, so that the active ingredient can be delivered into the intestine without being destroyed. Crush the tablet, and your medicine won’t be getting through.

If you have trouble taking your medicine talk to your pharmacist because there are often practical steps you can take or alternative preparations available.

April is IBS Awareness month and sufferers are being encouraged not to suffer in silence. IBS – or irritable bowel syndrome – is a common complaint, but difficult to diagnose. Sufferers experience chronic, recurrent bowel problems and abdominal pain. Bowel problems may include constipation, diarrhoea, pain or a combination of all three.

IBS is surprisingly common – between 10-20% of people are thought to suffer from the condition. It most often affects people between 20-30 years old and is twice as common in women as in men.

The frequency and severity of IBS symptoms are not predictable and can vary. If it is not managed, the disorder can disrupt many aspects of someone’s life.

While the cause of IBS is not known, it is thought that the symptoms are brought on by a disruption to the interaction between brain, nervous system and gut.

IBS cannot be cured, however once the condition is managed, IBS may cause minimal problems. Self-help – dietary and lifestyle advice – is key to managing the condition, and many of the medicines recommended for managing symptoms can be purchased from your pharmacy.

Speak to your pharmacist if you think you may have IBS. Don’t suffer in silence.

The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) has recent cast its eye over the UK’s high streets. It’s bad news if you live in the North or the Midlands where high streets are more likely to have higher concentrations of businesses which are viewed as harmful to public health.

Top of the league for places with the unhealthiest retail areas are Preston, Middlesbrough, Coventry and Blackpool. The healthiest high streets can be found in Shrewsbury, Ayr Salisbury and Perth.

The RSPH’s league table ranking 70 of the UK’s major towns and cities forms part of its Health on the High Street campaign, which aims to make high streets healthier by encouraging businesses to take steps to promote health while also giving further powers to local authorities in the areas of planning and licensing.

Based on public and expert opinion, the Society has identified bookmakers, payday loan shops, fast food outlets and tanning salons as having the most negative impact on health.

Pharmacies and leisure centres have the most positive impact on high street public health since they encourage healthy choices; promote social interaction; provide access to health advice and promote positive mental wellbeing.

Find out more at www.rsph.org.uk/healthonthehighstreet

Pharmacists generally believe that all older people should take statins on a regular basis to help prevent heart attacks. But when researchers asked patients how many of them would prefer a shorter life without such preventive pills the answer was not what your pharmacist might have expected!

The participants, averaging around 50 years of age, were asked how much time they would be willing to cut short from the end of their lives by avoiding daily medicine for cardiovascular disease prevention.

While over two thirds of the respondents said they would not be willing to cut short their lives by any number of weeks as a trade-off for avoiding a daily pill, around 1 in 3 were willing to make a trade. Specifically 21% were prepared to trade up to a year from their life, and over 8% were prepared to trade as much as two years.

The measure is about how much the act of taking a pill – obtaining it, remembering to take it and actually taking it – interferes with your quality of life, say the researchers.

Your pharmacist can provide prescription collection and delivery services, and medication aids to help people remember when to take their medicines, so if you are having problems in these areas, ask for help rather than give up!

Almost half of women (45%) and two fifths of men (37%) working in offices in the UK spend less than 30 minutes a day walking around at work, according to the ‘On Your Feet Britain’ campaign, which wants to encourage office workers to get off their backsides and improve their cardiovascular health.

The campaign kicked off on April 24 with offices being challenged to find inventive ways of getting employees on their feet, by holding walking meetings, getting outside at lunchtime, or simply taking five minutes to stand up and stretch.

A poll of 2,000 UK office workers found over half (52%) regularly eat lunch at their desk and almost a third (31%) sit for so long they even put off going to the toilet!

Almost eight in ten (78%) of those surveyed say they spend too much time sitting down at work and 62% fear this could have a negative impact on their health. They are quite correct. Sedentary behaviour can increase your risk of developing obesity and type 2 diabetes, as well as dying prematurely from cardiovascular disease.

To sign up to On Your Feet Britain visit www.onyourfeet.org.uk