harmacotherapeutics for Advanced Practice originated
from our combined experience in teaching nurse practitioners. As a nurse practitioner and educator
... [Show More] herself,
Virginia saw a need for practical exposure to the general principles of prescribing and monitoring drug therapy, particularly
in the Family Practice arena. As a PharmD, Andrew saw a need
to be able to teach new prescribers how to think about prescribing systematically, regardless of the disease state. We both
found no suitable book that combined the practical with the
systematic—most of the textbooks dedicated to this topic provided too much basic pharmacology with too little therapeutics. This book not only gives the basics on the pharmacology
of the drugs, it also provides a process through which learners
can begin to think pharmacotherapeutically—that is, learners
will begin to identify a disease, review the drugs used to treat
the disease, select treatment based on goals of therapy and special patient considerations, and learn how to adjust therapy if
it fails to meet goals.
This is a book that meets the needs of both students and
practitioners in a practical approach that is user friendly. It
teaches the practitioner how to prescribe and manage drug
therapy in primary care. The design of the book is based on
input from both academicians and practitioners. Contributors
were selected from academia and practice to provide a combination of evidence-based medicine and practical experience.
The text considers disease- and patient-specific information.
With each chapter, there are tables and algorithms that are
practical and easy to read and that complement the text.
Additionally, the text guides the practitioner to a choice
of second- and third-line therapy when the first line of therapy
fails. Since new drugs are being marketed at all times, drug
categories are discussed and information can be applied to
the new drugs. Each chapter ends with a simple case study
designed to prompt the learner to think and the teacher to ask
critical questions. Also, each case study asks the same questions, reinforcing a clinical decision-making process. There
are no answers to the questions since the authors believe the
purpose of the case studies is to promote discussion, and that
there may be more than one correct answer to each question,
especially as new drugs are developed. What’s more, the questions appear in the order in which they would be asked by a
practitioner as he or she prescribes a medication.
ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
Unit 1—Principles of Therapeutics
The first chapter introduces the prescribing process, including
how to avoid medication errors. The next chapter provides the
traditional, and necessary, information on the pharmacokinetics
and pharmacodynamics of drugs. Using this foundation, the
subsequent chapters apply this information to drug–drug and
drug–food interactions, and discuss the changes in these parameters in pediatric, geriatric, and pregnant patients. The remaining chapters in the Principles unit give overviews of drugs that
are used across many disease states: pain medications and
antibiotics. These chapters discuss the principles of pain management and infectious disease therapy, so that the reader can
learn how these concepts are applied to the disorders discussed
in the following units. A full chapter on Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (CAM) is included in this unit, recognizing continued use of these modalities and attempting to
meet the ever-growing need for information related to this
aspect of patient care. New to this unit is a full chapter on
Pharmacogenomics—the study of the human genes, effect on
drug behavior. The addition of this chapter reflects the rapidly
growing need for the clinician to understand how small variations in a person’s genetic makeup can greatly affect how that
person responds to drug therapy. While this chapter presents a
general overview of this area of study, several of the disorders
chapters incorporate this information directly into the clinical
decision-making process.
Units 2 through 12—Disorders
This section of the book, consisting of 40 chapters, reviews
commonly seen disorders in the primary care setting. Although
not all-inclusive, the array of disorders allows the reader to gain
an understanding of how to approach the pharmacotherapeutic treatment of any disorder. The chapters are designed to give
a brief overview of the disease process, including the causes
and pathophysiology, with an emphasis placed on how drug
therapy can alter the pathologic state. Diagnostic Criteria and
Goals of Therapy are discussed and underlie the basic principles of treating patients with drugs.
The drug sections review the agents’ uses, mechanism
of action, contraindications and drug interactions, adverse
effects, and monitoring parameters. This discussion is organized primarily by drug class, with notation to specific drugs
within the text and the tables. The tables provide the reader
with quick access to generic and trade names and dosages,
adverse events, contraindications, and special considerations.
Used together, the text and tables provide the reader with sufficient information to begin to choose a drug therapy for a
patient.
The section on Selecting the Most Appropriate Agent aids
the reader in deciding which agent to choose for a given patient.
This section contains information on first-line, second-line, and
third-line therapies, with rationales for why agents are classified
in these categories. Accompanying this section is an algorithm
P [Show Less]