PJ, January 2000

Ethnic monitoring to ensure equal treatment of pharmacists

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is engaged in the ethnic monitoring of its membership to ensure equal treatment of all pharmacists, the Society's Director of Professional Standards (Mrs Sue Sharpe) confirmed on January 21. Mrs Sharpe was responding to comments made on the previous day by the cha…

HOPE study published

The Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation (HOPE) study has been published in both the New England Journal of Medicine (2000;342:145) and the Lancet (2000;355:253). The study results, which show that the ACE inhibitor ramipril reduces the likelihood of cardiovascular events in high-risk patients by 22…

Herbal medicine interactions

Herbs may mimic, magnify or oppose the effects of conventional medicines if taken concurrently, says Dr Adriane Fugh-Berman (George Washington university school of medicine, Washington, US). In a review article in the Lancet, he describes documented herb-induced interactions (2000;355:134). P…

A year in the life of an army pharmacist

Captain Ellen F. Williams on her first year as an army pharmacist.…

Travel medicine (3) Food and water hygiene for the traveller

This article, the third in our series about travel medicine, discusses the advice that can be given to travellers regarding safe food and water…

NHS Direct: Focus on pharmacy’s role

In this article, Pamela Mason looks at how calls from the public to NHS Direct are handled and explains how community pharmacists’ role in the service is being tested in a pilot project in Essex…

Vaccinating hospital staff reduces patient ‘flu deaths

Vaccinating health-care workers reduces mortality from influenza among elderly patients in long-term care, according to Dr William Carman (institute of virology, University of Glasgow) and colleagues. They report in the Lancet (2000;355:93) how they carried out a multicentre, randomised, contr…

Update on antiretroviral therapy

In this article, Ms Elizabeth Davies provides an update on antiretroviral therapy (ART) by summarising recently revised British guidelines and discussing emerging toxicities, new therapies and treatment strategies for the future…

A pharmacy workforce survey in the West Midlands: (2) Changes made and planned for the future

Part (1) Aim To identify the kinds of changes pharmacists had made to their work in the past three years and those changes that they intended to make in the next three years. …

Kosovo after the conflict: rebuilding pharmaceutical services

Having been frequently in the news during 1999, Kosovo has now emerged from the most recent of the Balkan wars. In what was probably the largest forced movement of people in Europe since the 1939-45 war, more than half of Kosovo’s 1.8 million ethnic Albanians fled from their homes, mainly to n…