Communication skills

Non-adherence: medicine’s weakest link

Non-adherence to prescribed medicines is one of the biggest obstacles to effective healthcare, impacting on patients, healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare systems. Pharmacists are ideally placed to improve adherence, but are effective interventions available and how can …

Smoking cessation services: how nicotine replacement therapy and counselling through pharmacy can support adherence and quitting

Smoking is the primary cause of preventable ill health and death in the UK. Pharmacists and pharmacy teams are well placed to provide stop-smoking services, which are cost-effective interventions to help people give up smoking.…

Why patient information leaflets have their place in informing patients about their medicines

Patient information leaflets have come under criticism again recently. Theo Raynor explains the improvements that have been made to them and how they can be more useful for pharmacists during patient consultations.…

Saving my mother from depression using skills I learned in pharmacy

Amarata Gill explains how she used her pharmacy training to help her mother, who was suffering from depression.…

How to use the new BNF and BNF for Children app

Around 500,000 print copies of the BNF and BNF for Children are distributed to healthcare professionals each year. A new app which combines BNF and BNF for Children content ensures the availability of drug information through a smart device.…

Negative feedback from health monitoring devices

Health is more than the sum of laboratory results and monitoring figures. In the same way, quality of life needs to reflect more than just observations. I want to share my experience of a relative who is under at-home digital monitoring, which she started after she had a heart complaint. The t…

How to support cancer patients in community pharmacies

Every community pharmacy team will come into contact with cancer patients or their family members. This article aims to provide community pharmacists and healthcare professionals with the tools to be able to speak confidently to patients with cancer and summarises the useful resources available.…

Why pharmacists need to re-evaluate what information they provide to patients

Previous court cases concerning informed consent of treatment have raised questions about what consent means in relation to pharmacists, medicines and prescribing.…

Communicating with palliative care patients nearing the end of life, their families and carers

Pharmacists are becoming increasingly involved in palliative care and can be a source of important information and support for patients at the end of life. Health professionals caring for patients with advanced illness should develop skills for communicating with patients, and their families and car…

The rise of patient-centred technologies in community pharmacy

2017 could see a rise in patient-centred technologies across pharmacy. Martin Hao, managing director at Healthera, a new medicines management app, looks at the reasons behind the trend.…