Are Prescription Drugs Really Safe?

Empowering patients on treatment options allows the proper understanding of expectations and enables active participation in health care decisions. One component of empowerment is information. Understanding what drugs safety is, promotes better treatment conformity and facilitates the recognition of side effects that may become a serious issue. This book contains information every person that is taking either prescription or over the counter medications should have access to. Drug safety is ultimately the most important goal of the pharmaceutical industry, but what does it means for ordinary people? One of the issues regarding drug safety is that drug information on their safety and efficacy in lay language is scarce and not easy accessible. It is not always easy to understand what drug safety means and how it can affect your life. This book provides patients with a simplified approach to drug safety. Concepts are clearly presented, easy to read and with take away points were incorporated to allow further reference. The topics covered include: • The drug safety concept • Brief his-tory of drug development • The randomized controlled clinical trial and evidence based medicine • Risk/benefit assessment and how the decision is made • Drug effects, benefits • Variability in drug response • Personalized medicine and patient centered care • Drug tolerance • Side effects • Participation in treatment decisions • Quality of life • Compliance to treatment • Drugs with special pharmacology • Pharmacogenomics • Dose, dos-age, and length of treatment • Dosage forms • Off label use • Slow release/timed re-lease/extended release forms. As a continuous improvement process, I update the book once more to give you the most current information on drug safety and health care. I even shortened the title to make it easier to buy. In this revision, I included three concepts of health care and medicine that creates confusion when discussed and presented as a new solution to you. Therefore, I included a detailed review of Patient Centered Medicine vs. Patient Centric Medicine and vs. Personalized Medicine.