Editorial

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Welcome to the May 2012 homepage edition of i2P-Information to Pharmacists. Rollo Manning has been having some time out having staples removed from the site of his open heart surgery.He is now at home recuperating in Darwin, having arrived home last Friday, beating a cold and hasty retreat from Canberra.We all wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully, he will be fit enough to contribute by next month.
This month, Pharmedia discusses the toll that is taken when someone complains about you to an authority without good cause. Well, the good news is that you can now take action to protect yourself if such a complaint is made, and that may even include action for defamation. Read about a recent case involving two doctors, with Mark Coleman drawing on personal experience to illustrate.

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Pharmacy Feminisation - Taken to an Extreme?

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	Staff Writer articles by this author...
Editing and Researching news and stories about global and local Pharmacy Issues

The feminisation of pharmacy is occurring in most western economies and mostly for the same reason - the ability for women to work shorter and more flexible hours at a high hourly rate.
Many women have progressed to becoming committed pharmacy owners.
One pharmacy in British Columbia, Canada, has taken their pharmacy to a new level - one where only women will be treated and one where males are actively discriminated against.
That form of discrimination is technically illegal in Canada (and Australia), but males do not seem to be protesting.
Just goes to show how easy going and accommodating we males can be.
It has not happened yet in Australia, but some variations have occurred e.g. there are a number of pharmacies that only hire female staff.
Discrimination in any form should never be a part of Australia's pharmacy landscape.

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A group in Canada is stretching the limits of niche practice. Lu's Pharmacy, which opened in July in Vancouver, British Columbia, doesn't just focus on women patients; women are the only patients it serves.

"We have never provided services to men," said Caryn Duncan, executive director of the Vancouver Women's Health Collective, which has been dispensing health information and advice to women since 1971. "We don't expect that to change now that we have opened a pharmacy."

Opening a women's pharmacy is not a new idea. This year, students from the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy, Buffalo, N.Y., won first place in the National Community Pharmacists Association's Pruitt-Schutte Business Plan Competition. Their business plan for Isabella's Apothecary focused on early intervention and chronic-disease-state management tailored to the needs of women.

"It was a great program," said Sharlea Leatherwood, RPh, president of Great Oak Pharmacy, Kansas City, Mo., and former NCPA president. "They made a great business case for success. Any time you focus on a niche, you can focus your efforts and your contacts."

Current NCPA President Holly Whitcomb Henry, RPh, is one of many pharmacists who have focused their own pharmacy operations on women.

"It makes good business sense to focus on women," said Whitcomb Henry, who owns a pharmacy in Seattle, Wash. "Seventy percent of consumers who shop in pharmacies are women. A pharmacy that caters to women is a natural."

She said a women-only pharmacy is stretching the envelope. The VWHC agreed. Duncan said Lu's is the first women-only pharmacy in North America. The business is designed to support the collective's community outreach and education programs.

"Lu's is in an economically depressed part of the city," said Susan Ogilvie, spokeswoman for the British Columbia Pharmacy Association. "Women in that downtown Eastside neighborhood don't have easy access to full-service pharmacy care."

The neighborhood, one of the oldest in Vancouver, is widely known for poverty, drug use, and a large homeless population, Ogilvie said. Most area pharmacies focus on dispensing methadone. Typical decor features security grates, bullet-resistant Plexiglas barriers, and armed guards. Lu's dropped the Plexiglas and armed guards, but kept the security barriers.

The pharmacy does not stock methadone or other narcotics and customers are admitted individually through a locked door. Patients are a mix of neighborhood women and VWHC supporters from around Vancouver. The VWHC has long restricted its services to women who were born women.

No men have ever tried to fill scripts at Lu's. If a man did ring the doorbell, Duncan said, "I'd be outside having a conversation with him. We are here to support women's health and to focus on women's issues."

It remains to be seen whether Lu's women-only focus creates legal problems. Whitcomb Henry noted that a pharmacy in the United States that excluded men would be in murky legal waters. State pharmacy regulations as well as standards of practice and ethical codes generally require pharmacists to provide services without regard to gender.

Canadian regulations, standards of practice, and ethics also require pharmacists to provide services to anyone with a valid prescription and the ability to pay, said Lori DeCou, spokeswoman for the College of Pharmacy of British Columbia, the province's public agency responsible for regulating pharmacy practice.

Thus far, B.C.'s men don't seem bothered by Lu's women-only stance.

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