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The Prescription as Final Common Pathway

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2009

Jerry Avorn
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital

Abstract

There is an informational void about Pharmaceuticals in the training of most doctors, despite the importance of the prescription in medical care. The writing of the prescription is the final common pathway in therapeutic decision making, which involves such diverse forces and disciplines as anthropology, decision science, health economics, ethics, and politics, as well as pharmacology and clinical medicine. Programs to improve the precision and cost-effectiveness of doctors' prescribing must consider all of these factors if pharmacotherapeutics are to be used optimally.

Type
Special Section: The Rational Use of Therapeutic Drugs
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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