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List of contents
Part I: Perspective on Prescribing. The Medication-Related Problem Checklist: A Useful Tool for Practice. Problems in Prescribing: The Patient's Agenda. Medicines and Health: How Strong is the Connection? Drug Utilisation and Prescribed Feedback: QUM Tools of the Trade. Part II: Prescribing in Practice. QUM Issues and Hypertension. Antibiotics and Respiratory Tract Infections: QUM Issues. QUM Issues in Asthma. QUM Issues in Osteoarthritis Management. QUM Issues and Depression. QUM Issues for Hyperlipidaemia. Part III: Better Use of Medicines in the Information Age. Changing Prescribing Habits: Making the Most of Visitors to the Practice. New resources for Marshalling Drug Information. Patients' Use of Medicines: Many a Slip. Media Messages: Balancing Progress Against Backlash. Appendices: 1: Sample Answers to QUM Self-Test Vignettes. 2: Consumer Medicine Information for Renitec. 3: Response from a Consumer Expert to Vignettes in Chapter 8.
About the author
Dr. Andrea Mant is a general practitioner with more than 25 years of clinical experience and is an acknowledged expert in the area of general practice prescribing and community use of medicines. She holds appointments as Staff Specialist in Community Medicine at the South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service and as Associate Professor in the School of Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales. She chairs the National Therapeutics Committee of the Council of the RACGP. Professor Mant's contribution to knowledge in the field of prescribing of psychotropic drugs in general practice was recognized by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales with the award of Degree of Doctor of Medicine (by published work) in 1992. She was chief investigator for the Therapeutics in General Practice,TREND-TAG project, funded through the Commonwealth's Pharmaceutical Education Program (PEP). The experience gained from that project provided the impetus for this book. Professor Mant is an adviser on pharmaceuticals and prescribing to state and Commonwealth governments. She has been a member since its inception of the Drug Utilisation Subcommittee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee which monitors trends in drug utilisation in Australia. She was a member of the first PHARM (Pharmaceutical Health and Rational Use of Medicines) Committee, responsible for producing the policy document endorsed by the Australian government as its National Policy on Use of Medicines, as well as working on the PHARM/Consumer and Industry Task Forces. She is a consultant on pharmaceuticals to the Health Insurance Commission. Professor Mant has developed undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education programs for teaching about prescribed drug use. She is a longstanding member of the Advisory Board of the NSW Medicines Information Centre and the NSW Therapeutic Assessment Group; and a consultant in community medicine to the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, St. Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. She represents the RACGP on the BEACH Advisory Board and the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council. Professor Mant has a long record of involvement in general practice research and development and is the immediate past chairman of the RACGP's National Research Committee. She was a member of the Evaluation Steering Group and the Divisions Evaluation Advisory Group, in their initial phases, and is a member of the Board of the Integration Support and Evaluation Resource Unit, Centre for General Practice Integration Studies, headed by Professor Harris, at the University of New South Wales. She is also on the Management Committee of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, collaborating in work on benzodiazepine prescribing and use.
Summary
Provides a primary care perspective on how to get the best use of medicines. Combining a patient, system and drug-centred approach to optimising prescribing for common conditions, this handbook provides the busy GP with a systematic way of thinking about medication-related problems and addresses clinical pharmacology and consulting skills.
