Tackling the tickle
For the first time UK guidelines for the treatment of cough have been produced by the British Thoracic Society (p267), which has calculated that acute cough costs the British economy about £1bn a year.
The guidelines are evidence-based and cover a spectrum of coughs from
the trivial to the chronic that may indicate potentially life-threatening
conditions and require prompt referral to a doctor.
Many sections of the guidance will not be relevant to day-to-day community
pharmacy practice, and those parts that are, may seem no more than commonsense
and simply reinforce the current practice of many pharmacists.
Viral cough is a case in point. Many customers swear by their preferred
cough remedy and will continue to purchase it, whatever its effectiveness.
However, other customers may be persuaded — on the basis of the
guidelines — that a proprietary treatment is not going to make
much difference to their symptoms and discover that lemon and honey offers
as much soothing benefit.
As the profession is increasingly gearing up to manage minor ailments,
to promote self care and, relatively soon, to prescribe independently,
guidelines of this sort — even if only a part of them is of value
to pharmacy — will become progressively more helpful. What is important
is that such guidelines are independent of manufacturers, are produced
by reputable clinicians and are evidence-based.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s “Practice Guidance” series
goes some way to providing such information, although it is not comprehensive
and many further topics could be usefully covered.
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Innovations and BPC 2006
Normally, the main summer holiday period comes to an end and pharmacists have time to draw breath before setting off for the British Pharmaceutical Conference.
Not so this year. BPC has been ousted from its normal slot at the end of September
by the Labour Party, which is holding its own conference in Manchester that week.
BPC starts, instead, this Monday.
One innovation this year is a joint BPC-PJ careers forum where pharmacists can
find out about different opportunities and receive advice about personal career
development. The Journal is also changing its coverage of BPC. Next week, we
will be publishing the highlights of the event: some keynote speeches, news and
awards. In the past, the rest of the coverage has been spread over the subsequent
four issues of The Journal. This year we will be publishing a BPC supplement
that will be distributed with the issue of 30 September. Look out for your copy — we
hope it will make more sense to gather the material under one cover.
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