A collaboration of professional leaders, thinkers, and seasoned authors introduces the concept of pharmaceutical care - a model of health care practice by which pharmacy practitioners and other medical professionals can improve the drug use process and ensure that patients receive full benefit from pharmacotherapy.

Open up Improving the Quality of the Medication Use Process: Error Prevention and Reducing Adverse Drug Events, and you?ll gain instant access to crucial data pertaining to the prevention, detection, and research of error in health care, specifically in the pharmacy profession. Under the direction of this collection of current and timely chapters, you?ll find that you can become more adept at defining error, determining the factors that contribute to error, and deciding how medication errors can be reduced and even completely prevented. Each year, an estimated 120,000 preventable deaths and nearly 1,000,000 injuries occur during the course of medical treatment--a staggering and alarming figure. Improving the Quality of the Medication Use Process takes a hard look at such misguided health care and proposes quick and effective methods for intervention on the part of the individual professional and the health care community at large. These and other topics will help you in your efforts to identify error and design methods of error prevention: the causes of medication errors strategies relative to system modifications--practice standards, packaging, labeling, and product identity accountability issues from various multidisciplinary health care sectors the medical, ethical, and public policy considerations associated with medication errors and patient injuries various system and practice initiatives currently being implemented to facilitate the medication use process Improving the Quality of the Medication Use Process is a book for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, health care system managers, the pharmaceutical industry, and the average citizen who has been in the health care system and wants to be informed before the next trip to the office or drugstore. Read it, and you?ll find that you more clearly understand the problems leading up to adverse drug events. You?ll also feel more dedicated to taking the proactive measures that will minimize or even eliminate medication errors.

Roger Bate has spend years on the trail of counterfeit medicines in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, learning the anatomy of a nebulous, far-reaching black market that has resulted in countless deaths and injuries around the world. Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines is the culmination of Bate's research and travels—both a fascinating first hand account of the counterfeit drug trade and an incisive policy analysis with important ramifications for decision makers in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the international World Health Organization.

The Most Comprehensive Set of Quality Guidelines Available to the Pharmacy Profession ASHP positions and more than 80 ASHP guidance documents of varying scope provide ongoing advice to practitioners and health systems to help improve the medication-use process, patient care and safety, and patient outcomes and quality of life. ASHP Statements ASHP Guidelines Technical Assistance Bulletins Therapeutic Position Statements Therapeutic Guidelines ASHP-Endorsed Documents

An alarming look at America’s other drug problem—medication safety! Drug misadventures are an all-too-frequent and deadly cause of adverse medical events. Prescribed Medications and the Public Health: Laying the Foundation for Risk Reduction explores ways to combat the widespread problem of adverse drug events (ADEs). This comprehensive book shows how our broken health care and medication use system often inflicts harm—most of it preventable—on patients. Strategies are presented to help health care managers, health professionals, regulators, and policymakers to dynamically improve the entire system. With the growing use of prescribed medications comes a rising number of adverse drug reactions, drug interactions, allergic reactions, and medication errors. Prescribed Medications and the Public Health discusses problems such as drug supply issues, drug defects, counterfeit drugs, limitations for oversight of Internet prescriptions, inaccurate splitting of pills, and poor administration of drugs. The book examines the issues from all angles, including patient considerations, drug factors, and unsafe practices that contribute to ADEs. Liability costs for drug injury are reviewed, along with effective practical strategies for preventing, reducing, detecting, and documenting adverse drug events. National and local plans are explored to help achieve the essential goal of greater safety throughout the system. The text is extensively referenced and includes approximately 50 figures and tables to clearly present information. Prescribed Medications and the Public Health reviews in detail how to battle these problems in both inpatient and ambulatory care: adverse drug reactions dangerous allergic reactions harmful drug interactions medication errors adverse vaccine reactions drug misadventures Prescribed Medications and the Public Health is crucial reading for medication safety officers; pharmacoepidemiologists; medication safety experts; educators and students in schools of pharmacy and public health, medicine, nursing, and hospital/health services management; health care managers; regulators; policymakers; and advocates for improving drug safety.

Medication safety is the most challenging goal for pharmacy practice and patient safety professionals in all health care facilities. This book serves as an essential reference guide for planning and implementing a medication safety program. Written by nationally-recognized experts, Medication Safety: A Guide for Health Care Facilities provides a comprehensive analysis of principles and practices associated with the prevention and identification of medication errors, as well as interdisciplinary, facility-wide recommendations for achieving medication safety in all settings. This book is divided into four sections so users can easily find the information they need: the Importance of Medication Safety, the Medication Safety Team, Building a Safe Medication Use System, and Measuring Medication Safety.