This book adequately captures the current state of affairs and issues relating to public health and the pharmacists' role in this area. One of the unique features is the Actions for Change Today section which details/itemizes the unmet needs in each area of public health.
The goal of a high quality, cost-effective and accessible health care for patients is achieved through constructing a team-based and patient-centered health care delivery system. The expanded role of pharmacists uplifts them to patient care from dispensing and manufacturing or marketing of drugs. Along with doctors and allied health professionals, pharmacists are increasingly recognized as an integral part of the patient care team. Furthermore, colleges of pharmacy need to revise and up-date their curricula to accommodate the progressively increasing development in the pharmaceutical education and the evolving new roles of practicing pharmacists in patient care settings. This book focuses on the expanded role of the pharmacists in total patient care including prescribing, dispensing, compounding, administering and monitoring of drugs at home, hospital, community, hospice, critical care, changeover and other care settings. The sector is emerging in both developed and under-developed countries. Overburdened by patient loads and the explosion of new drugs physicians turned to pharmacists more and more for drug information especially within institutional settings. And today’s patient care pharmacists are taking more interests in medication review and reconciliation, patient education and counseling, creating drug therapy regimen and monitoring compliance. The purpose of this book is to guide the pharmacists in their daily interactions with patients and to ensure collaboration with other health professionals. The contents are mostly based on recently published articles related to patient care, with most recent ideas and activities followed by the patient care pharmacists around the globe. However, a pharmacist implements the care plan in collaboration with other health care professionals and the patient or caregiver. Along with professional guidelines, the book discusses the concepts and best practices of patient interaction, patient rights, and ethical decision-making for the professional pharmacist, apprentice and student. In every chapter, the role of pharmacists in that chapter specific issues are detailed explicitly so that a professional pharmacist or a student can figure out his or her do’s and don’ts in that specific situation. Moreover, further reading references are listed as future recommendations. So, the book is an archive of potential references too. Among so many books about patient care, either doctors’ or nurses’ roles are highlighted. The proposed book highlights the pharmacists’ roles and responsibilities to the most, separated from those of doctors and nurses, with the most recent information obtained from most publications in several journals, books, bulletins, newsletter, magazines etc.
In this expanded 600+ page edition, Dr. Cohen brings together some 30 experts from pharmacy, medicine, nursing, and risk management to provide the most current thinking about the causes of medication errors and strategies to prevent them.
A practical, detailed and up-to-date text on the management of HIV infection and AIDS. The major clinical trials are reviewed and evaluated, and complications of HIV are presented, with management guidelines. Chapters are also devoted to psychiatric aspects and issues involving health-care providers.
Increased HIV screening may help identify more people with the disease, but there may not be enough resources to provide them with the care they need. The Institute of Medicine's Committee on HIV Screening and Access to Care concludes that more practitioners must be trained in HIV/AIDS care and treatment and their hospitals, clinics, and health departments must receive sufficient funding to meet a growing demand for care.
Medication use is the predominant form of health intervention in our society. And as we age, the likelihood of medication use increases dramatically, with more than 80 percent of those over age 65 using one or more medications. Along with that, the potential for medication errors also increases. Indeed adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and adverse drug events (ADEs) are a significant problem in older adults. Written in a practical format by contributors from Australia and the United States, Medication Management in Older Adults: A Concise Guide for Clinicians presents the available evidence on research interventions designed to reduce the incidence of medication errors in older adults, with a focus on acute, subacute, and residential (long-term) care settings. Because medication errors can occur at all stages in the medication process, from prescription by physicians to delivery of medication to the patient by nurses, and in any site in the health system, it is essential that interventions be targeted at all aspects of medication delivery. Chapters cover the principles of medical ethics in relation to medication management; common medication errors in the acute care sector; medication management in long-term care settings; nutrition and medications; the outcomes of a systematic review; dose form alterations; Electronic Health Records (EHR), Computerized Order Entry (COE), Beers criteria; and pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. For those clinicians especially concerned with providing the best possible outcomes for their older adult patients, Medication Management in Older Adults: A Concise Guide for Clinicians is an invaluable resource and a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature on medication errors.
Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.
Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine
Pharmacists now have a new resource to help expand their HIV knowledge, guide their treatment, and provide comprehensive care. This book is the first of its kind to provide pharmacists with a consolidated resource for offering care to patients with HIV infection, including diagnosis, primary care, pharmacological management of co-infections, and more.
Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.