In this age of widespread drug shortages, this week we're addressing an important question.
1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient
2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer
3. Quick Wrap-up
Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "My cream for eczema is past it's expiration date. Can I keep using it?"
Concise Conclusion: The fact that it's beyond the expiration date means the medication may not be as strong as it was before, so it may not work. However, it would not harm you either.
Quick Wrap-up: Most pharmacists know that medications are generally still potent far beyond the expiration date. However, most don't realize that there is currently no medication known to cause harm once beyond it's expiration date (the only risk of harm is it may not work). Of course, this won't change our recommendation to the general patient (i.e. avoid using expired medication when possible), but it should make you more comfortable recommending the use of expired epinephrine injections, salbutamol inhalers, naloxone kits, and other as-needed emergency medications.
We hope you have found this useful, and please reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestions you can; it will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.
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