Pharmacies Expertise
Not a day passes by when our e-mail inboxes don't fill with advertisements for prescription medications. Many of these emails promise to deliver drugs of all classes by overnight courier without having a prescription. While there are actually legitimate online pharmacies, and also the practice of telemedicine or cyber-medicine is gaining acceptance, this change within the way medicine will be practiced is rocking the foundations of the medical establishment. Having the capacity to consult a health care professional online, and obtain prescribed drugs delivered to your doorstep by UPS has broad social and legal implications. The web facilitates making drugs available to men and women who may not be able to afford to pay US prices, are embarrassed to find out a doctor face-to-face, or are suffering from pain, the management of which puts most doctors in direct conflict with the 'war on drugs' but conversely there is the question whether these pharmacies make drugs available to recreational drug users without the oversight of a licensed medical practitioner.
Health care in the US has reached a point where it really is expensive and impersonal which has caused the consumer to become generally unsatisfied with the medical establishment as a whole. Examples include the huge differences between the expense of drugs in the US and Canada, long wait times in US pharmacies, and poor service in general. Perhaps realizing this, US customs appears to tolerate the millions of Americans that visit Canada each and every year to buy their medications, as for the most part, these 'drug buyers' are elderly American's that can't afford the high cost of filling their prescriptions within the US.
Rather than to travel to Canada or Mexico millions of Americans are now turning to the web for both their medical needs. Telemedicine (or cyber medicine) provides consumers with the capability to both consult with the physician online and order drugs over the web at discounted prices. This has resulted in consumers turning to online pharmacies for their medical needs, and in particular pharmacies with a relationships with a health care provider, which allow the consumer to completely bypass the traditional local pharmacies, with the added advantage of having their physician behave as an intermediary between the consumer and the pharmacy. According to Johnson (2005) this really is resulting from consumers becoming very dissatisfied in regards to managing both local pharmacies and health professionals. As Johnson, notes, "Consumers tend to be more more likely to know the name of their hairdresser than their pharmacist." When Johnson (2005) rated the different professions in the health care system, he found that pharmacists had the bottom interaction with their patients than did any other group. Today, resulting from this "consumers are buying 25.five percent of their prescriptions online, opposed to 13.5 percent of that are picked up at a local pharmacy" (Johnson 2005).
What has brought so much focus on online pharmacies is the fact that it really is possible to get just about any drug without a prescription online. Many of these prescriptions are for legitimate purposes purchased through an online pharmacy because the buyer is too embarrassed to visit the doctor or for other reasons such as the unavailability of FDA approved drugs to the consumer. These drugs may include steroids that because of their misuse and being classed as a classed a category three drugs, are seldom prescribed by physicians. These drugs have a useful purpose to those experiencing any wasting disease for example AIDS, they additionally play a role in ant-aging (FDA, 2004).
Today a visit to a physician is generally brief, much of the triage it's done by a nurse or possibly a nurse practitioner with the physician only dropping in for a number of minutes, if at all. In many cases the affected person is seen by a nurse practitioner. One of the arguments against telemedicine or even a better term is cyber-medicine, is the fact that the doctor doesn't have a physical relationship with the patients and so is in no position to make a diagnosis, thereby can not legally prescribe drugs.
Ironically when one compares the work up that one has to undergo to consult with the online physicians and compares this to a face to face visit with a local doctor, one finds that the on-line physician, in many cases, has a greater understanding of the patient's medical condition than does the physician who meets face-to-face with the patient. For most cases before an on-line a health care professional prescribes any sort of medication they insist on a full blood workup they could also require that one has additional tests performed, for example.
