PJ, August 2017, Vol 299, 7904

Lloyds Pharmacy Online Doctor is first to pass CQC inspection across all categories of care

Lloyds Pharmacy Online Doctor is the first online service to be passed as providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services in accordance with the relevant regulations in the latest round of inspections of online providers of primary care, carried out by the Care Quality Commission…

New guidelines on Parkinson’s disease released by NICE

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), England’s health technology assessment body, has released new clinical guidelines on the diagnosis and management of Parkinson’s disease in adults aged 18 years and over.…

How I support community health services as a national quality pharmacist

The opportunities for pharmacists within the community services sector are huge, says James Andrews.…

Tribute to Peter Noyce

Much has rightly been written in the June 2017 issue of The Pharmaceutical Journal by many senior figures in the profession in tribute to the major impact made to the profession, and health care more broadly, by Peter Noyce, who sadly and prematurely died on 3 June 2017. I would like to add a few a…

Tribute to Bryan Holroyd Hartley

Reading the notice of Bryan’s death made me feel sad but it also brought to mind so many happy memories. We first met 45 years or so ago when he was an established member of the Department of Health’s team, and I was a newly appointed society’s inspector. We didn’t cross swords and lose our…

Manufacturers should evaluate quality control methods for vaccines

I read with interest your news story ‘Researchers find metal impurities in vaccines, but European regulator challenges study’ ( The Pharmaceutical Journal 2017;298:76). Manufacturers have an interest and an obligation to produce all drugs, including vaccines, as contami…

Increasing refusal to supply EHC would be beneficial

I have recently retired from practice but if I were still practising in community pharmacy today, I would have to decide whether to look for a new sector of practice or wait until I was ousted from my post because I have a moral objection to supplying emergency hormonal contraception (EHC). Th…

Let’s start constructive discussions about dispensing doctors

The story of William Wake’s career is heart warming ( The Pharmaceutical Journal 2017;298:111), but contains a detail that reveals the failure of leadership in pharmacy. For over half a century, the pharmacy profession has not met its basic premise that all prescriptions shou…

Why Australia got it right with reclassifying codeine to prescription-only

Australia’s medicines regulator made a smart decision when it recently decided that codeine products will no longer be sold over the counter (OTC) ( The Pharmaceutical Journal online, 23 December 2016). Addiction and death have been linked to these products in many countries.…

Balancing action on antimicrobial resistance with animal welfare

As almost everyone in the business of caring for the health of humans and animals is acutely aware, on our current trajectory, it is estimated that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050, with many arising from simple infections following routine operations. Thi…