Minister of Health Mark Holland speaks about new national pharmacare legislation during a press conference in Ottawa on Feb. 29, 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle
The way pharmacare is implemented could contribute to the Canadian health insurance system’s transition toward a more contentious and unequal American-style system with heavy administrative burdens.
Package inserts contain information on the pharmacology of a drug.
Kathrin Ziegler/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Ambulance call-outs associated with the misuse of pregabalin (Lyrica) have increased tenfold in Victoria since 2012, mirroring an increase in prescription rates.
Your guide to a public health crisis that’s likely to get worse.
People without ID, like Steven Kemp, are sometimes turned away from the country’s already threadbare system of drug treatment centers.
Matt Rourke/AP Photo
Doctors know that inappropriate prescribing can lead to antibiotic resistance. So why do they keep doing it?
Off-label use is when an approved medicine is prescribed for a different reason, at a different dose, or in different patient groups than originally intended.
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The off-label use of medicines is not illegal and it doesn’t mean regulators have specifically “disapproved” its use. But there are a number of issues to consider before using a medicine off-label.
Food can prevent certain medicines being absorbed into the bloodstream.
Bertalan Szürös/Flickr
Have you ever been advised to take a medicine with food? How about taking a medicine with cola or avoiding grapefruit? Hundreds of medicines have food-related dosing instructions. With four out of five…
Most people overestimate the benefits and underestimate the harms of medical intervention.
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“It might do me some good and it won’t hurt to give it a go.” How often have you heard a phrase like this? Most people have naïve optimism about medical care. That’s the finding of a systematic review…
Why are hospitals running out of critical drugs?
IV drip via Bhakpong/Shutterstock
Hospitals and pharmacies around the country are facing severe shortages of essential drugs. These shortages can limit access to critical medications and compromise patient safety, resulting in serious…
Pills ok during pregnancy? We can’t know if we don’t study them.
Medications image via www.shutterstock.com
Imagine being pregnant while having a chronic health condition such as diabetes, hypertension, depression or asthma, or being diagnosed with an illness while pregnant. Amazingly, your doctor may not know…
Pain, sleeplessness and ‘difficult’ behaviour: just some of the reasons we overprescribe.
Gary Cameron/Reuters
It should be no surprise that older adults are the largest users of prescription medication. After all, older adults are far more likely to have chronic health conditions than are younger people. It follows…
Drug reps form a huge part of the industry’s marketing strategy.
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Here’s what I remember. It was 14 years ago, and I was a junior doctor working in psychiatry. Some colleagues planned a dinner as an end-of-term celebration and, despite reasonable incomes, they decided…
Do free prescriptions lead to waste?
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The call to abolish the prescription charge in England by the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin is the centre of great debate. Unsurprisingly so. The cost of making and buying pharmaceutical drugs is an emotive…
Australia already has a category of nurse specialists who can prescribe some medicines – nurse practitioners.
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We started the week with a new proposal by the Grattan Institute to shake up the hospital workforce and allow nurses to take on more roles traditionally performed by doctors. But should registered nurses…
Electronic prescribing technology could reduce mistakes made by hospitals in medication prescriptions by up to 66%, a study has found. The study of the technology in two hospitals found procedural errors…