Developing a Model for Pharmaceutical Palliative Care in Rural Areas-Experience from Scotland.

Palliative care is increasingly delivered in the community but access to medicines, particularly 'out of hours' remains problematic. This paper describes the experience of developing a model to deliver pharmaceutical palliative care in rural Scotland via the MacMillan Rural Palliative Care Pharmacist Practitioner (MRPP) project. The focus of the service was better integration of the MRPP into different care settings and professional teams, and to develop educational resources for the wider MDT including Care Home and Social Care staff on medicine related issues in palliative care.

Access to medicines in remote and rural areas: a survey of residents in the Scottish Highlands & Western Isles.

Objectives: Sparsely populated areas are potentially predisposed to health inequalities due to limited access to services. This study aimed to explore and describe issues of access to medicines and related advice experienced by residents of the Scottish Highlands and Western Isles.

Study Design: Cross-sectional cohort study.

Thresholds for premature contractions in murine hearts exposed to pulsed ultrasound.

A single pulse of high intensity ultrasound can produce either a premature ventricular contraction or a reduction in the aortic pressure in frog hearts. The objective of this study was to determine whether similar ultrasound exposures can produce premature contractions in the mammalian heart. The cardiac activity of murine hearts in vivo was monitored noninvasively using electrocardiography and plethysmography.

Evaluation of a new Seralyzer assay for carbamazepine.

The performance of a new dry-phase, strip immunoassay technique for the analysis of serum carbamazepine concentrations (Seralyzer), was compared to a standard high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method. One hundred blood samples were collected from 87 patients and analysed using both techniques. There was no significant difference between the concentrations measured by either technique, and the results were highly correlated (r = 0.