INTRODUCTION Self-care oriented people are more likely to undertake self-care activities in order to treat lay self-diagnosed symptoms and restore their own health without professional assistance. One of these activities is self-medication, which refers to the use of medications without medical consultation. The absence of permanent doctors in rural Greece encourages self-medication practices. ...

This study is a preliminary analysis of the prescription behavior of residents in a teaching hospital, with respect to nephrotoxic drugs during a 2-month period. The overdose rate was 3%. Only 5.1% of the doctors were responsible for 51% of the nephrotoxic drug overdoses.

BACKGROUND Primary medication nonadherence (PMN) is any instance whereby patients fail to initiate a pharmacotherapy regimen after receiving a prescription for new therapy. The Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) has proposed a standardized definition for PMN and a quality measure to assess the rates of PMN in community pharmacies. OBJECTIVES To (a) measure PMN using the proposed PQA measure with...

BACKGROUND Taiwan has separated drug prescribing and drug dispensing services since 1997. Because of this, patients with chronic illness as well as those with diseases that have a relatively stable status may have their prescriptions refilled in nearby clinic pharmacies without having to go to hospitals. METHODS Shuang-Ho Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan, implemented a drive-through pharmacy servic...

BACKGROUND An essential medicine (EM) system has been implemented in China to reduce patients' financial burden and to make the use of drugs more rational. This study aims to evaluate the current state of the EM system in Guangdong Province. METHODS We conducted surveys in 21 cities in 2012, covering 98 medical institutions, 1,509 doctors, 17 medicine manufacturers, and 17 distribution compan...

BACKGROUND A dearth of knowledge exists regarding how multiple health behavior changes made within an exercise prescription programme can improve health parameters. This study aimed to analyse the impact of changing diet and increasing exercise on health improvements among exercise prescription patients. METHODS In 2016, a representative sample of all enroled New Zealand exercise prescription...

drug prescription errors are a common cause of adverse incidents and may lead to adverse outcomes, sometimes in subtle ways, being compounded by circumstances or further errors. therefore, it is important that veterinarians issue the correct drug at the correct dose. using two or more prescribed drugs may lead to drug interactions. some drug interactions are very harmful and may have potential ...

in England and Wales (Gunnell et al., 2003; Lodhi and Shah, 2004), Sweden (Carlsten et al., 1999) and Australia (Hall et al., 2003). There may be several reasons for this. First, the sample size was small. Second, some countries may use older antidepressants for which data on the AI were absent. Third, the AI does not take into account awareness of depression among individuals and their carers,...