Website intended for a NZ health professional readership
Natalie is a pharmacist who provides consultancy services primarily around consumer access to medicines, through Natalie Gauld Ltd. Her pharmacy experience includes community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, industry, and research. Since being a member of the Medicines Classification Committee (2004-2009), Natalie has facilitated prescription to non-prescription reclassifications of medicines including trimethoprim, sildenafil, topical calcipotriol and vaccinations, often working with Green Cross Health. Some of these reclassifications have been world firsts and won awards. Natalie is a Fellow of the Pharmaceutical Society of NZ, an Honorary Research Fellow with the University of Auckland, and has an affiliate position with the University of Otago.
In this article, Sue Frankland looks at the global problem of wastage of medications, including causes such as overprescribing and non-adherence. She also presents information from her master’s dissertation on how people understand, and respond to, medication expiration dates
