Tag Archives: pharmacy

With half term out of the way and the summer holidays looming you might be looking for travel advice? Your pharmacy can provide those essentials like sun tan lotion, wipes and plasters to cope with any minor disasters.

Your pharmacist should also be able to advise you on antimalarial medication, and any vaccinations you might need (and may even be able to administer them for you if they provide a travel clinic service).

If you can’t get to your local pharmacy for any reason, there are some good sites you can visit online:

• Nathnac.net is a site commissioned by Public Health England and contains the latest travel advice for UK travellers.

• www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk is the NHS Scotland travel site for people travelling abroad from the UK.

• NHS Choices also offers a variety of advice – stick ‘travel’ in the search box to see the options.

• Fitfortravel.nhs.uk

• wwnc.cdc.gov/travel is a US site, but that doesn’t stop it having some useful information – just be aware that UK guidance may differ in some respects.

With half term out of the way and the summer holidays looming you might be looking for travel advice? Your pharmacy can provide those essentials like sun tan lotion, wipes and plasters to cope with any minor disasters.

Your pharmacist should also be able to advise you on antimalarial medication, and any vaccinations you might need (and may even be able to administer them for you if they provide a travel clinic service).

If you can’t get to your local pharmacy for any reason, there are some good sites you can visit online:

• Nathnac.net is a site commissioned by Public Health England and contains the latest travel advice for UK travellers.

• www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk is the NHS Scotland travel site for people travelling abroad from the UK.

• NHS Choices also offers a variety of advice – stick ‘travel’ in the search box to see the options.

• Fitfortravel.nhs.uk

• wwnc.cdc.gov/travel is a US site, but that doesn’t stop it having some useful information – just be aware that UK guidance may differ in some respects.

You, the people of England are visiting your GP more often and are having longer consultations than you were in 2007, according to a study in The Lancet.

The study warns the increases are unsustainable, and that general practice in England could be reaching saturation point. So making your local pharmacy your first point of call could be even more practical and sensible than ever!

The pressures have not been eased by the fact that recruitment of new GPs and nurses remains low while the population steadily increases.

The study was based on an analysis of more than 100 million GP and nurse consultations at 398 general practices in England between 2007 and 2014 – equivalent to 4.5 per cent of all GP practices in England.

Between 2007 and 2014, the average number of annual consultations (face-to-face, telephone and home visits) per patient rose by 13.67% for doctors and 2.76% for nurses. Average consultation times also increased by 5% from 8.45 minutes in 2007 to 8.86 minutes in 2014.

Have you noticed you have been sniffing and sneezing a bit over the past few weeks? Runny nose? Eyes a bit itchy? You may be suffering from hayfever brought on by tree pollen, the first pollen type to peak during the year.

Many hay fever sufferers jump into their cars poorly prepared for their journey. Your local pharmacy can help you reduce the dangers of driving by taking proper precautions.
Choosing the right anti-histamine is highly important as some older, yet popular, brands can make you drowsy. Ask your pharmacist for long acting, non-sedating antihistamine.

Treat watery eyes before driving You need to be able to see where you are going so use anti-allergy eye drops before getting behind the wheel. Again, ask one of our pharmacists for an appropriate product.

Keep tissues handy. A sudden sneeze or a continuous running nose can be annoying and easily distract a driver. So don’t forget to pick up a pack of tissues to keep in the car.

Increasing GP numbers alone will not solve problems in primary care. So says the NHS Confederation, which says that healthcare in the community should be universally accessible and supplied by a multi-professional team.

Primary care includes your community pharmacy, high street opticians and dental practices as well as GPs.

It is a myth that A&E is the first port of call for most patients. Around 90 per cent of care takes place in the community. While demand for GP services rose by 13 per cent between 2008 and 2013/14, consultations with nurses rose by 8 per cent and with other primary care professionals, including pharmacists, by 18 per cent.

It is also a myth that primary care is only used by patients with minor ailments. A significant percentage of GP workload relates to managing long-term conditions, such as diabetes, or cardiac disease in the over 65s. Some 60 per cent of this last group will have more than 12 GP visits per year and have over 24 items dispensed in their local pharmacy.

Most people collect their prescription from the pharmacy without having any idea how much it actually costs. It is either free, or £8.20 per item if you pay prescription charges, isn’t it?

Well, not quite… In a move to encourage more responsible use of NHS resources the Health Minister Jeremy Hunt has announced that soon the price of your medicines will be printed on the pack if it costs more than £20, along with note that the cost is ‘Funded by the UK taxpayer’.

The average prescription item in England cost £9.39 in May, but most pharmacies dispense dozens of items every month costing well over £100.

Everyone knows the NHS is strapped for cash, yet missed GP appointments cost the NHS £162 million each year and missed hospital appointments as much as £750 million – and £300 million a year is spent on wasted medicines.

The Government hopes that putting the cost of the medicine on the pack will not just reduce waste by reminding people of the cost, but also improve patient care by encouraging people to take their medicines as prescribed.

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.

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

England is now the only one of the four home nations that levies a prescription charge, and there it is only paid by around 10% of patients.

Children and pensioners are exempt, along with people with certain long term conditions (LTC) such as diabetes and cancer. But patients with other LTCs such as asthma and multiple sclerosis do have to pay, and it is not clear how the distinction is made. An estimated 7 million people of working age in England have a long term condition.

A survey by the Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) shows that two thirds of pharmacists and GPs think that the current exemption criteria for prescription charges in England should be widened to include anyone with a long term condition (A similar number want the charges lowered or abolished altogether).

Around 40 leading pharmacy and medical organisations belong to the Prescription Charges Coalition, which is calling for all those with long term conditions to be exempted from paying prescription charges. It is currently running a public petition to present to whichever government wins the May general election.

Our pharmacies now offer healthy living and wellbeing services as the NHS focusses on tackling an epidemic of largely preventable long term diseases. After all, it makes little sense for the NHS to spend more on stapling stomachs and gastric band operations than it does on effective obesity prevention programmes.

‘We may be living longer, but we risk spending many of these extra years in poor health unless we do a better job of tackling major risks such as obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, smoking, and excessive alcohol consumption,’ Public Health England warned last month in its latest 5 year plan.

Among its seven health priorities are tackling obesity (particularly among children); reducing smoking (and stopping children starting); reducing harmful drinking; reducing the risk of dementia; and tackling the growth in antimicrobial resistance. So come and have a chat with us. You may be surprised at how we can help.