Pharmacies Books

With such a glowing resume, I'd expect a book from Dr. Farb with more substance.
It is a 111-page book. BUT only the first 33 pages are original content. The first part of the book is basically a "story" about dueling computers and in the process try to introduce ideas of computer validation. The "story" doesn't make much sense in regard to computer validation. The concepts are introduced at a thirty thousand-foot high level, sprinkled with "review questions" that are so obvious you don't need to read the book to get them right. You can skim through the entire "story" in about 20 minutes, and what you learn about computer validation you can find for free on the internet, especially when the information is presented at such a high level.

So what happened after the first 30-some pages? The rest of the book contains sections from various FDA documents thrown together with no organization whatsoever. So you get over 70 pages of documents (in small print) that you can download FOR FREE from the FDA site! And the way the documents are presented, you don't know when one document ends and the other one begins. Completely unorganized. Just a bunch of text thrown together and you'll need to figure out what's going on.

The book doesn't provide any context of why these particular FDA documents are included, how they are related to each other, when they are applicable etc. Nothing. And worst of all, some of the the documents are outdated already!

Consider this book is meant to be an introduction guidebook, I'd assume there will be more explanation included.

There is a CD ROM version that I believe costs a lot more. You definitely DO NOT want the CD ROM version.

This books is a major disappoinment.

I bought this manual and CD as I looked for a source to learn (more) abou FDA regulations and GMP validation from an IT Managers perspective. This seemed to be a good start despite the fact it is rather expensive. My first disappointment came when I opened the package to discover "the manual". You can get copies of FDA regulations for free. Here you have to pay for a copy in poor quality print in very small font and all wrapped up with a cheap plastic ring the kind you use to bundle your next in-house powerpoint presentation.
I hoped the CD would be better, but discovered it only contains some 150 screens, several only displaying useless cartoons of 'angry' or 'happy' computer screens. The training "story" doesn't make any sense, navigation thru the material is extremely poor and you learn nothing new about validation unless you really didn't have a clue what it was all about in the first place. I read thru the whole material in 90 minutes; correctly answering the tests and checks was a no-brainer and when I eventually reached the "exam", it guided me to the page where I could print my "certificate", after answering the first question correctly!
This stuff is a waste of time and money.

This item was a very poor value. The cd course could have been a nice idea, but it was very short, full of mistakes and had quite a few misspellings. The test questions had mistakes and some questions didn't work at all. All in all, I am very disappointed because, for $175, I expected more.

In order to install the software, one has to email the company, send the serial number and wait for them to respond back with the key to unlock the software. This is an unnecessary delay and a cumbersome attempt on the company's part to force you to register. I found that to be extremely annoying.

Finally, there is no way to print out the certificate or save the image of the certificate that one receives when passing the exam other than to do a screenshot and edit it in a graphics program.

Very disappointed. Book is just a list of definitions and nothing else. I returned the book.

I don't know if it was the text book or the teacher, but this book was completely useless for my Pharm class. It jumps around and isn't very well organized within each section. I don't recommend it and I made that clear to my nursing school Director for next year.

The book is supposed to be a compendium of facts on all available vaccinations. Although a worthy concept, the number of surprising errors reduces its value considerably.

For instance, the book says meningococcal vaccine is given to prevent lung disease (page 267), but in fact it prevents meningitis. And included in the list of conditions that are not contraindications for vaccination are pregnancy, breastfeeding,and "adverse events following vaccinations (page 277)." Yet live vaccines are absolutely a no-no during pregnancy and sometimes breastfeeding, and prior adverse reactions are usually a contraindication to receiving additional doses.

On pages 278-9 is a bizarre chart titled "Drugs Indicative of Disease Warranting Immunization." According to this chart, if your patient is receiving immunosuppressants (cyclosporin), radioisotopes for certain cancers, other treatments for an organ transplant, or HIV treatment, these are indicators that the patient needs vaccines. However, people receiving these treatments are going to have a poor response to immunization! Any needed vaccinations should have been administered before they began immunosuppressive therapy. Furthermore, live vaccines can be extremely dangerous in the immunosuppressed.

If you want the Immuno Facts, you will have to go elsewhere. (Did this book really have 4 editions???)

I found this 'interactive' cd to be quite pedestrian. The scenarios or vignettes that were supposed to show sales interactions were pretty cheesy and not in the least bit helpful. The GUI was not well-designed and the whole experience was less than effective.

Having recently entered the business of analyzing drug discovery and drug development opportunities, and seeking an exposé of the overall process to serve as a checklist, I did some searching on Amazon.com and purchased this book. The content was very disappoining, as what I learned was little more than a series of platitudes and definitions of words. I can forgive this, and attribute it to my failure to assess the target audience of the book. The content likely would be informative to a person who knows nothing about the drug discovery process.

What motivates me to write this review is that this book contains the worse pros I have ever seen in print. The abuse of the English language is so severe that the text is painful to read. The editing is atrocious. Every third clause is redundant, and the author never hesitates to use ten words where three would do. Whole paragraphs could be removed without diminishing the information content. Randomly chosen example: "Another function that specialized computer experts handle, in conjunction with their colleagues in the chemistry department, is the computational chemistry operation for the design of new molecules." How about: "Computer experts also work with chemists to design new molecules by computation." The author or his editor appeared to be consciously trying to make the book longer. Technical writing is rarely elegant, but there is no excuse for such writing.

This book is worthless. Do not waste your money on this book. There are other books out there that are much better if you are trying to study for the NAPLEX. There are a lot of questions dealing with medications that you will never see used and will not be on the test.

The answers are also already outdated in this book (even though it was published in 2006). It gives incomplete lists when naming drugs within a certain class, etc.