Tag: pharmacy diabetes

Does Your Pharmacist Help You with your Diabetes Care? Should They Be Able To?

Posted on | by tomkarlya | 9 Comments on Does Your Pharmacist Help You with your Diabetes Care? Should They Be Able To?

PharmacistNo question about it that the face of the diabetes landscape is changing everyday.  The diabetes health field is adding players and removing players with each yearly cycle.  Whether it be Obamacare or competitive bidding for diabetes supplies, the diabetes world of just a year ago, is different from today, which will change again in the very near future.

It is not all bad, it is not all good but it will be changing for some time to come.

As the time for Doctors and Diabetes Educators in hospitals and/or Doc’s offices becomes limited, a new partner in the diabetes world is emerging more and more; and that is the Pharmacist.  I should not say new because pharmacists have been around for a long time but it is not until fairly recently that they are being called upon as never before to become a bona-fide partner in the battle we all face on a daily basis.

Have you had to rely on the Pharmacist at the local drugstore, whether it be in a national chain, a local store, or even the drug store in your local supermarket; to answer your questions as you pick up your prescriptions?  Is your pharmacist able to answer questions regarding the use of diabetes supplies; how to work a glucometer, and what meds will react with insulin; or not?

I see more and more the initials CDE (Certified Diabetes Educator) after many pharmacists titles, and I also know there is a drive as never before into training the pharmacists in better diabetes management.  

From a business perspective it makes sense if the pharmacist knows about diabetes, doesn’t it?

For those of you who do not use a mail order pharmacy, I ask you to chime in today how important is your pharmacist in your diabetes care, or the care of your child.  If they are not involved or do not help, let us know that too.

Everyone’s time limit with us, to discuss good diabetes care, keeps getting shorter and shorter, it just seems that pharmacists need to receive some sort of training, and many do, to be able to answer our questions.  I have to also think that they need to be up-to-date with the most recent and best advancements in diabetes care.

So chime in, does your pharmacist play a role in diabetes care, and/or do you think they should be able to?

I am a diabetes dad.

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Good-bye to Blogging as We Know It??? I Surely Hope Not.

Posted on | by tomkarlya | 9 Comments on Good-bye to Blogging as We Know It??? I Surely Hope Not.

There is a very interesting article being circulated online, written by ‘NPR‘.  The article entitled:
Social Media Help Diabetes Patients (And Drugmakers) Connect
begins by stating how the diabetes community is connected but quickly turns to the fact that pharma companies are getting involved with many of the bloggers and that involvement needs to be regulated, or guidelines better set by the FDA, according to advocate groups.

People living with diabetes have created a vibrant online community. Big drug companies are certainly taking notice — and some advocacy groups feel that the Food and Drug Administration should as well.

But there is a disconnect here which I believe the writer misses altogether.  In as much as there are people out there claiming various ‘cures’ and ‘potions’ that will rid you of your diabetes (that should be vetted), taking all bloggers and stating that there should be a regulating body over them is a dangerous and slippery slope to be navigating. 

My guess is that there are far more writers inspiring and connecting people than there are those specifically ‘on contract’ with a specific agenda.  Those who blog in this community who write about subjects where they receive any sort of compensation are also very quick to also add that they receive that compensation from a particular company.

Bloggers are writers.  Writers speak from experience to lend a voice of experience.  In life; in diabetes; as a parent; as a person with diabetes; and yes to even state that they tried a product and it was great (or sucked for that matter).

The article quotes Jason Bonner who states: 
“There’s no proof in diabetes that social networking is helpful,” says Jason Bronner, a doctor at the University of California San Diego Medical Center. He’s leading a study that will help determine whether social networking can actually help patients manage diabetes.

Now there are two different positions here—-social networking being helpful and social networking actually helping patients manage their diabetes.  It might have helped if the writer wrote a longer article to clarify the difference and what might or might not need the influence of a federally governing body.

If it is all the same to the NPR writer, I may not consider a particular writer helping to better manage my children’s diabetes but I would be lost if I did not have some writers to clarify my sanity from time to time.  Bloggers are bloggers…..I can differentiate the ones I want to be part of my life as credible and so can mostly everyone else.

I just think we need to be very careful trying to censor, or federally control, a world of writers that are crucial to those who live with diabetes every day, or are caretakers to the same.

This is a large community that is very intelligent and informative.  To be honest, should someone write or say something that is bogus, untrue, or off the mark……believe me the diabetes community would be there before anyone else to correct and clarify any point made that was off-base.  But I find it dangerous for someone to say to all writers, “You must stay within these parameters”.

How one differentiates between me reading about life and again about cinnamon curing diabetes……I am not too sure.  But I think most of us know or would be quickly informed by others in the diabetes online community.

Perhaps the advocacy groups (the writer does not mention which ones) that thinks the FDA should be more involved may want to start with an easy one; why not start with asking the media to ‘get it right’ when it discusses diabetes.  

I love the diabetes community.  I also respect all of the great things the diabetes community accomplishes with the written word on blogs, FB, print media, or otherwise.  DO we really want the FDA to set guidelines?    Really?

I also do not believe anyone should just come out there and say what they want about a product or medicine……but what I know is this community will speak up very quickly when a line is crossed, but remember this; there are many lines.   It would be dangerous and harmful to think any one agency could set one hard and fast rule across the board to govern; would anyone really want that?

I don’t, do you?

Thoughts?

I am a diabetesdad.

Disclaimer: I am a blogger; and love that I am.