prescriptions

General Practice is making pharmacists’ lives very difficult and is potentially risking patient safety…

Terry Maguire on September 1, 2021, 7:22 am

| Readers 14486

GPs locked the surgery doors on 16th March 2020 and have, it seem, only resumed a basic service. Officially no one is saying so; it’s an uncomfortable truth and GPs are everywhere making the case they work harder than ever. Perhaps they do. When GP spokespersons appear outside practices to tell us how exhausted and burned out they are we might be hearing the truth or we could be witnessing spin at its apogee. Patient access remains constrained to the …

Join us for a free in conversation event: The drugs don’t work – our over medicated society…

Brian O'Neill on January 5, 2018, 1:23 pm

| Readers 753

In 2016 our population of 1.8 million received over 41 million prescription items costing over £400m. NI spends 40% more on drugs per head of population compared to England and 20% more than Scotland which is a region of comparable social deprivation. Do we get 20% to 40% more value from our drug spend in terms of improvements in health and well being? Join us for a one on one discussion with myself (Brian O’Neill) and Terry Maguire. Dr Maguire owns and …

With a third of the population in some areas of NI on antidepressants how do we deal with our massive drug over prescribing rates?

Soapbox on June 17, 2015, 9:11 am

| Readers 1925

It was when a clinical psychiatrist expressed her concern at the number of people prescribed antidepressants that I realised it wasn’t just me. She too thought the good people of West Belfast especially unhappy as the data was telling us some 30% of the local adult population are on “happy pills”. You might ask how did we get here and should it be acceptable that a third of any population are taking medicines to improve their mental health? When I …