Guidance has been published, explaining how patients who leave hospital can seamlessly integrate back into their community with the help of the New Medicine Service (NMS) and Medicines Use Reviews (MURs).

A focus group, that may have included people in pharmacy jobs, was used to develop the guidance, which has been published by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) and the NHS Employers organisation.

It has also had endorsement from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and others in pharmacy jobs.

The support tools can be used by community pharmacists and hospitals to make the ways in which they share changes to patient prescription details more formal.

This means that patients will get the correct medication, and the most out of it, when their care is transferred and the risk of being re-admitted to hospital can be potentially reduced.

The Department of Health`s chief pharmaceutical officer, Keith Ridge, said: "These documents are a practical way to help community pharmacists and hospital colleagues make sure that the patient`s medication regime and any information they are given is consistent during the transfer of care.

"They will help underpin a safe and beneficial approach to MURs and NMS provided to patients post discharge."

Copyright Press Association 2012

Durex and the National Aids Trust (NAT) have joined forces to launch a website that helps healthcare workers improve their knowledge of HIV.

People working in pharmacy jobs might want to visit the website, available at durexhcp.co.uk/hivtoday, to increase their understanding of the infection

The online resource includes a CPD tool that allows users to test and build upon their knowledge of the condition, while a certificate can be downloaded as proof they have completed the course.

The questions and information covered includes everything from diagnosis and treatment to social and work issues that could affect patients.

There are also plenty of details that cover a number of issues questioned by pharmacists relating to HIV.

NAT chief executive Deborah Jack said: "Pharmacists [have been] asked if patients` drugs would interact with HIV medication and if HIV patients needed a flu jab."

Copyright © Press Association 2011

Deaths from breast cancer have been reduced by around a third thanks to the use of modern chemotherapy drugs, according to a study.

Health practitioners, people working in radiology jobs and oncology nurses will all have noticed the effects of such treatments on their patients. The study looked at around 100,000 women in 123 trials held over the last 40 years and found that chemotherapy drugs in the 1980s helped cut deaths from breast cancer by about a quarter.

However, modern advances in the field of cancer treatment have improved this rate, cutting mortality by about a third across different types of cancers, compared with undergoing no form of chemotherapy.

The findings, published in The Lancet medical journal, show that chemotherapy is effective in cutting mortality rates regardless the size of tumour, level of spread, age of patient, or whether it was an oestrogen-fuelled cancer.

However, the study did reveal that chemotherapy plus hormone (endocrine) therapy worked better than endocrine alone when treating patients with "ER-positive" cancers.

Sir Richard Peto, from Oxford University, one of the study leaders, said: "Most breast cancers are ER-positive, and for ER-positive disease that appears to have been completely removed by surgery, the 10-year risk of recurrence and death from breast cancer can be reduced by at least half by giving a few months of modern chemotherapy plus five years of endocrine therapy."

Copyright © Press Association 2011

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has reiterated the importance of seeking medical advice about medicine use after it emerged that a fifth of people think it is safe to stop taking long-term prescriptions to detoxify the body.

The NPA advised people considering such drastic action to seek advice from those working in pharmacy jobs before making any such decision.

A poll of 1,000 people commissioned by the NPA, carried out to coincide with its Ask Your Pharmacist Week, also revealed that a third of people believe it is okay to take non-prescription medicines that a pharmacist has recommended for someone else.

Many people also think it is safe to give adult medicine to children as long as the dosage is lower, while a quarter incorrectly think that aspirin is a watered down version of ibuprofen.

Meanwhile, half of those polled believe that one of the side effects of the flu vaccine is flu itself and one in ten people never check to see if their medicine is still in date, despite the fact that its effectiveness diminishes after it reaches its use-by date.

Leyla Hannbeck, head of information at the NPA, said: "It`s important to get the right treatment and the right advice - which you can get from your local pharmacy often without an appointment."

Copyright © Press Association 2011