Physicians Desk Reference
From Drug Rehab Wiki
The Physicians' Desk Reference is an extremely large and expensive book that provides detailed descriptions of every prescription drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In 2011, the 65th annual edition of this reference book was published by the PDR Network, LLC, in Montvale, New Jersey. The book is used not only by physicians but also other healthcare professionals, including nurse practitioners, pharmacists and all those who need readily available information on drugs. The Physicians' Desk Reference provides a way to look up any drug by the name of its manufacturer, its generic name, its trademarked name, and by function.
The book is divided into five parts. In part one, you find the manufacturers' index, which offers an alphabetical list of pharmaceutical companies and every product they manufacture. For example, under Johnson and Johnson/Merck, you will find the drug "Pepcid," a product used to treat heartburn. The second part of the Physicians' Desk Reference lists every drug by its trademarked and generic names, so here you would look under the word "Pepcid." In Part Three of the book, every product is listed according to what illness or condition it treats. For example, if you look under "Gastrointestinal," you find the subcategory "Antacids," and under that "Calcium Antacids," where you finally find information about "Pepcid." Part Four provides colored photographs of every prescription drug available. This is very helpful to pharmacists and others who need to identify a tablet, patch, pill, injectable or any other pharmaceutical by the way it looks.
The majority of pages in the Physicians' Desk Reference belong in Part Five, which is the "product identification guide." Here you look under the drug manufacturer's name, for example, "Johnson & Johnson/Merck," and then you can locate "Pepcid." The long article includes many pages describing the benefits of the drug, how it works, if it interacts with other drugs, whether it is safe for geriatric, pediatric or pregnant patients, warnings about potential allergies to the drug, and the results of clinical testing of the product.
The Physicians' Desk Reference also includes information about dietary supplements, and products that do not contain alcohol or sugar.
The Physicians' Desk Reference Network offers copious amounts of constantly updated information available online about new drugs, product recalls, new information about products already being sold, and product alerts that can be transmitted to cell phones, as well as computers. The PDR Network provides a way for physicians, drug manufacturers, and government drug regulators to communicate with one another quickly and efficiently.
