Pharmacists are burning out

In what must come as a complete shock to you, it seems that “Growing workloads and stresses lead to well-documented exhaustion, subsequent staffing shortages.”

But while the pandemic slammed pharmacists, as it did many other health-care workers, pharmacy groups say working conditions are generally more stressful and demanding now than they were before the pandemic.

The Washington Post has the story.

Drug takeback (half) day is coming

The next DEA’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is coming up: April 22 from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm across the state.

If you don’t have a drop-off box in your pharmacy, your patients have two options: They can use the DEA drive up collection-box locator at DEA.gov/takebackday

=OR=

They can find a pharmacy with a drop box using the locator at prescriptiondrugdisposal.com. Let ’em know!

Georgia Gwinnett College gets fast track to Mercer

Good news for students at Georgia Gwinnett College: If they’re looking to get a PharmD at Mercer, their applications will get priority reviews thanks to a transfer admission agreement between the schools.

The students will do their prereqs at GGC, then enroll in Mercer’s PharmD program. Their first year of Mercer credits will transfer back to GGC so they end up earning their bachelor’s degrees a year early. It’s like fuzzy math!

Alcohol doesn’t help

Once again it’s time to answer the question that never gets an answer: Is a bit of alcohol good for you? Today’s answer comes courtesy of Canada’s University of Victoria, and it is … no.

Not that it’s necessarily bad for you — that’s not what the study was about — but rather that studies showing a benefit to a glass of beer or wine were flawed. “[A]fter adjusting for study flaws and biases, ‘the appearance of the benefit from moderate drinking greatly diminishes and, in some cases, vanishes altogether’.”

Again, this study didn’t find any harm, just no benefit.

The combined adjusted data from the [previous] studies showed that neither occasional drinkers (less than 1.3 grams of alcohol, or one drink every two weeks) nor low-volume drinkers (up to 24 grams a day, or nearly two drinks) had a significantly reduced risk of death.

Captain Obvious would rather call a friend

“ChatGPT doesn’t have all the answers on cancer screening”

The responses were appropriate for 22 questions, or 88%. But one question was answered incorrectly with outdated information, and two others had inconsistent responses that varied significantly each time the same question was posed.

Lithium and autism?

Could lithium in drinking water mean a higher risk of autism? That’s what UCLA researchers, working with a group of those shifty Danes, concluded: “Pregnant women whose household tap water had higher levels of lithium had a moderately higher risk of their offspring being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder,” they wrote.

Essentially, they compared health records of almost 64,000 Danish kids and cross-referenced autism diagnoses with mom’s address when they were born. The bottom line: “As lithium levels increased, so did the risk of an autism diagnosis.”

Oh, and they note that it could become a bigger issue as more electronic devices — with their lithium batteries — are discarded and leach into the environment.

Elsewhere: OK has had enough

Strange as it may seem, apparently corporations — in this case CVS/Caremark — can only ignore the law^* so long before the Powers That Be take action. Over in Oklahoma, Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready has filed an “administrative action” against the pharmacy/PBM, claiming it repeatedly ignore the state’s law against PBMs steering patients to the pharmacy it owns.

“I am convinced that CVS/Caremark does not want to follow Oklahoma law and wants to find every opportunity to skirt their responsibility,” Mulready said. “I am extremely frustrated with the misinformation and confusion presented to Oklahoma consumers.”

^* For people it’s “break the law.”

Short Take

Long acting time-release tech

Time release meds are nothing new, and super-fancy ones using microtechnology isn’t, either. But now Rice University bioengineers say they can do that one better — an injectable payload of medication that can be tweaked to adjust when the drugs are released.

Said one engineer: “With this, you’d give them one shot, and they’d be all set for the next couple of months.”