Pharmacy Books

Quality of this book was pretty poor, even thought the descriptions online stated only to have highlighting in it. At the same time didn't indicated if it was a lot of highlighting or little, which ended up to be in a pretty bad condition with the page quality being warn down and there were so much writing in almost every page and the highlighting was pretty extensive. The price that was asking for and sold to me was not fair, for the poor quality of this book.

This book is really terrific, but if want to save a little money, I'd recommend not buying it. Instead, drive/fly from wherever you live and go to Dr. Carroll's lectures, because they're word for word what's in the book.

I am a paramedic FTO in Atlanta and have come across many different types of field guides. The JEMS guide is by far the best, certainly topping the more popular ones. Just about every single OTC home drug can be found in it, as well as its class. Frequently, if the drug is of the proper schedule, the appropriate antidote is offered in the regular listings so one doesn't have to flip back and forth. I recommend this guide above the others.

This guide might be alright for a Paramedic or maybe and EMT-I, but is completely unsuited for EMT-Bs. Of this 90 page booklet, only two pages are devoted to trauma: all you get here are pupil sizes and Glasgow/trauma scales. There is no Basic Cardiac Life support, the rest of the manual is ECG, ACLS, Drugs,IVs and some medical/drug abbreviations. This is an ALS manual, basically useless to the BLS provider.

As most people will know, the United States of America is full of people with health problems, largely do to bad diets and laziness. Doctors are now in the habit of prescribing medications at an alarming rate, while not telling patients how to fix the problems WITHOUT drugs. I bought this book in hopes of finding truthful pro/con information about specific medications.
This book does NOT supply that information. It is a Pro drug reference only with the exception of the "possible side effects" column which is totally incomplete, not giving accurate info about all the negative things these drugs do to the human body. I am having the book recycled. Maybe someone will use the new pages for truth. For accurate and helpful information, try Best Choices from the People's Pharmacy

The price tag is a positive bargain for the weighty Johns Hopkins Complete Home Guide To Pills & Medicines: Indispensable Advice From America's #1 Medical Center, making it as recommendable for home reference collections as for libraries. Here's all the latest details on over 700 generic and 2,300 brand-name prescriptions, from dosage, over-dosage and interactions to side effects. Each entry is reviewed by a Johns Hopkins expert in the field, and all are offered in clear, concise language to make it easy to understand. Add a special section on herbs and dietary supplements and you have you have a simply wonderful handy reference.

You do not have to be a pharmacist or medical professional to really enjoy this book. The editors (Andrea Tone and Eliz. Watkins) do a superb research job of educating all of us on exactly what goes on between drugs as they are first entering drug trials, then finally, if accepted by the FDA, go to market. They take the top and latest 8 "wonder" drugs and explain in detail how they made their companies billions--whether the people needed them or not. The book is documented well, and by my 28 years as a pharmacist, I would say they (the writers) are right on. The conflicts of interest between the FDA, and the physicians IN THE FDA are well defined, as is the process of a drug being first approved for market for an RX product or OTC one. It is sad that MDs use primarily a free "PDR" as their source of info for new products, but the writers are absolutely correct in saying this!! The authors are a little shy when it comes to exactly how "prices" are set on new drugs, but outside of that, they are excellent!! They tell you that Mevacor OTC was outvoted 12-1 from being a product that all of us could buy--yet the FDA never gives anyone a real reason why that happens. The book exposes the overly friendly nature of BigPharma with the world's most powerful agency (the FDA) and how no one--not Congress, not the people, no one--seems to care. All of the major "hits" are explained very nicely--like Valium, Ritalin, Viagra, the statins, but the editors do leave out one problem which has come up in 2008. There are NO more blockbuster movers coming out of the pharmaceutical industry right now. They are out of ideas!! This means generics will become an issue, and so be it. Also, as a chemist, most "new" designer drugs today are copy cats which are compared to...nothing. We only test against placebos, not drugs already marketed, so exactly what does that prove to anyone? Only New Zealand and the United States allow advertising on TV for RX products and this book explains how the downside of that decision is really bad news for especially what I call the "Ritalin" kids of today. This book will make you sit up and think about what is going on in drug America, and it is not the illegal drug marketing I am worried about. Our children are being targetted as the next "boom" for pharmaceutical companies..and all of us had better take notice. guyairey

I purchased this book hoping that it would be a really interesting book about our modern U.S. culture of hypermedication. Instead, this book was a collection of essays written to discuss the historical aspects of prescription drugs and their modern use. Marketing and advertising for some of these drugs are actively discussed, but this collection really misses the mark on what I had hoped it would be.

This book does cover a broad range of prescription drug histories, including the rise of antibiotic use, uses of bipolar drugs/mood stabilizers, hormone replacement therapy, oral contraception, stimulants (ie: Ritalin, Adderol, etc.), tranquilizers, cholesterol and disease, and Viagra*. I think the idea of this book is interesting, but I would not recommend it for anyone who is not interested in the medical background of these prescriptions or for anyone who does not have a basic knowledge of U.S. medicine. I had picked this book for a casual read (hoping that it would discuss how overmedicated America has become), and I was overwhelmed by the academic-ese in which it was written and I quickly lost interest in the subject matter.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a medical background (including physcians, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists), but I would not recommend it as a casual weekend read for someone who has no such training.


*Note: If you are looking for an interesting book on Viagra, read _The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America_ by Meika Loe.

I bought this book for a more recent edition of previous drug reference books I owned ( Complete Guide to Prescription and Non Prescription drugs by Griffith and Essential Gude to Prescription Drugs 1993 by Long). Many of the standard drugs I take were not listed and the index listed drugs by what they were used for which I found very ineficient. I expected much better from a book that was supposed to be a subset of the PDR. I was so disappointed in this book that I actually returned which I'm not sure I've ever done

I purchased this inexpensive guide soon after I was diagnosed and it has been very useful in checking all the prescriptions I received from my doctor. Based on the Physician's Desk Reference, this guide is the most comprehensive reference on medications and essential for patients with IBD or IBS. I've used it many times, mostly to prepare for questions about medications for my doctor. It contains a wealth of information on thousands of medications: indications for use, how each drug works, potential side effects, and interactions with other medications. The PDR is also indexed by manufacturer, category, and brand and generic names. It will definately help you exercise more control over your medical care. On CCFA's book list.

I am a DO. This is a good book for quick reference for positions for tests or in practice, but there is VERY limited explaination text. If you are studying for a written test, this is not a good source. If you in practice and need a reference for physical positions, its better. easier to carry around than Foundations book.

This book is a must have for the Osteopathic Medical student. It's small enough to fit in your lab coat pocket and yet complete in the way it describes the techniques. Counterpoint, myofascial release, bioenergy, and many other treatments are covered concisely and many have pictures of the techniques. I recommend this book to anyone in Osteopathic medicine.

This is the second edition of a very popular book on sample size estimation that is a valuable reference for any statistician in the industry. we all need to go through such expercises at the beginning of a trial as part of the protocol development.

One disappointment I have with the book is that it does not delineate new topics and other changes/additions from the first edition. Often this is covered by having two Prefaces, the original one from the first edition and a new one from the second edition. The authors unfortunately did not choose to do that. So an owner of the first edition would have to scan through both books to identify the changes.

Another disappointment is the lack of reference to any existing software to do sample size estimation and these days there are a lot of products available. The programs nQuery Advisor and Power and Precision handle equivalence, superiority and noninferiority problems for continuous data. They also provide approximate and exact methods for binomial data. Other packages such as StatXact handle sample size estimation for exact binomial tests as well as for Fisher's Exact test. PASS, S+SeqTrial and East are packages that provide the designs and sample size stopping rules for group sequential procedures and in some cases adaptive designs. Also with the development of version 9 of SAS comes the new procedures power and glmpower that do everything that nQuery can handle.

The value of the book is that it develops the methodology and therefore helps with the understanding of how and when to use the various procedures. Traditional tables that use to be important for sample size calculations are now obsolete given the availability of good software tools. Although the book goes to great lengths to cover almost any application. Most of these applications can be handled these days through the available software packages.

I can definitely recommend this book as a fine reference on sample size estimation for the wide range of trial applications. I would only try to encourage the authors to drop the use of tables and get up to date by recommending the appropriate software for the various applications.

I found the errors in the book absolutely infuriating! Many typos in the text from the first edition are maintained in the second edition. The typos in both text and formulas in the expanded information in the second edition together with gaps in the development of the information made it necessary to consult other sources to figure out what's going on.

I was looking for more information on medical devices than was provided and greater detail on the statistical methodology used to validate which was especially sketchy, especially at such a steep price.

I thought this book was excellent, it was exactly what I was looking for in terms of sterile products validation

This book didn't help me much. It has a 3 tests for you to keep trying, but it doesn't have any lessons like Kaplan book

Seriously. Don't expect too much from this book or you will be
greatly disappointed. As per other reviews, it's just good for
practicing more problems to prepare for the exam; that's why it deserves only 1 star -- it serves just that purpose but doesn't go beyond that. But keep on your toes -- I'ved noticed several errors in the answer sections. This should not be considered a review book be/c it does not contain any review of all the subjects you should know. It's just a slew of questions (not even definitively PCAT questions) and that's what I bought it for -- to adapt myself to a greater range of test questions. Find it at your local library if you can.

Hey previous reviewer, who are you kidding!!!
This book ranks low as a study guide for the PCAT IMHO.
Who is going to believe that someone actually got
100% on all sections of the PCAT. And you used
this book to get that? Sure. How much money
did you get to write that!

People, listen to me who has gone thru this before and has
been accepted to Pharm school for fall 05. Don't just buy
one book, get your hands on ALL of them and do the practice
tests. You need to know your subjects, that's a given. You
have to practice on your speed and learn HOW to take these
standarized tests.

These tests don't just measure what you know.
They also measure your IQ indirectly with carefully designed
questions. If you are a "A" student, you failed yourself if
don't get 90+. Same goes with a "B", "C", student. Schools
look for that. If you're GPA is 3.7 and you get 80% on the PCAT
that doesn't look good for you. What I'm basically telling you
is that your expectation should closely match your grade. That
is a 3.0 student should expect to get in the 80s, IF YOU PREPARE
WELL FOR THE PCAT. It's not realistic for that 3.0 student to
expect to get 90+ on the PCAT. You can, but you had better
put in 150% effort to prepare for the PCAT.

PCAT is difficult. It's a tool to find out who are the top
students; students who are serious, dedicated, and committed.
I see lots of students who want to be, but aren't willing to
work for it. Those are the ones who won't make it here or
anywhere. Who are you?

One complaint, the verbal section is different on the real test. The analogies are the same, but the instead of antonyms, the actual test uses fill in the blank sentence completion. The other sections are pretty good though. Combined with one offical PCAT practice test I scored in the 93rd percentile (got my scores today).

I purchased this book shortly before I took the PCAT in October of 2004. I read the whole book and I also took the two practice tests and timed them. I have read some of the other reviews of readers who expected to see actual PCAT questions in the book - I personally did not expect that. I knew that the actual PCAT would be more difficult and I also knew that I needed to review my General Chemistry (based on my scores in the practice tests). I reviewed my Gen. Chem., kept up with my current Organic Chem, and then took the test. I found the math section to be the most challenging; most of the people who tested where I did failed to complete the section in the time given. I thought the book was great though; the practice tests look an awful lot like the real one. And this is coming from someone who scored in the 95th percentile and was accepted into a College of Pharmacy.

I haven't taken my PCATs yet, I'll update this when I do, but as far as I can tell, this is a great book. It covers everything in depth and real well. I don't know what the other guys were crying about. You definitely want a study book that is either as hard or harder than the actual test? Otherwise, what good will it do you. I guess you could read a 3rd grade book on biology to study. But that doesn't help now does it. The writing sample on the cover means that there are sample passages in the book duh!! Excellent book. I highly recommend it.

I don't know what the negative reviews are talking about, maybe they're trying to sell Barrons' book or something because I got this book from the library and compared it to other PCAT books that were available there and this one is clearly the best. After using it for a while, now I am buying it here at Amazon. If you want sample tests, this is not the best book, but if you are looking for a book that will help you prepare for the test, there is none better than this one that I have seen. What makes this book uniquely good is its in depth outline of topics that will be on the test (and by the way, the guy that said he got 99% on all parts of the exam is lying because the scores are NOT given in percentile, they're rankings, and to get the exact same ranking in 5 different categories would be statistically near impossible). All of us have taken tests before and think about what helps you STUDY the best: knowing in great detail all the possible topics that are on the test, or having an old exam from another profesor which has multiple choice questions which will NOT show up on the actual exam. You can get an idea of what the test will be like by seeing an old exam, but it will not help you know to select A B C D or E on the actual exam which has completely different questions on similar topics.

I am STUDYING now to take this test a 2nd time. The first time I took it I just wanted to get an idea of how I would score and I ended up with an overall ranking score of 73 without studying at all. If English is your first language and you normally use a dictionary when you read a novel, the analogy/vocab section will be a breeze for you (I got an 86 on that section). I am 37 years old and have not been in school for a number of years, until recently, and I absolutely did crappy on the quantitative section which is full of basic math skills that I forgot long ago (eg. percentages of two 7 digit mostly zero decimal numbers multiplied together, order of operations, numbers to a fractional or decimal power, etc.), by using the outline in this book I know I will do MUCH better this time on the quantitative section. There is a tiny, tiny bit of organic chemistry in the chemistry section but if you haven't taken organic yet don't worry about it (you can guess on those 2 questions). The main thing you need to concern yourself with on the chemistry section is the TIME. You have 35 minutes to answer 65 questions which means you have about 25 seconds to read, decide, and color in the box (go to an art supply store and get a big FAT #2 pencil OR one of those new liquid pencils, yes liquid, so you can make one quick swipe instead of wasting seconds coloring in the multiple choice bubble). I sort of blew it because the proctor announced "5 minutes left" and I had about 15 questions left and I totaly freaked and rushed to finish (which I did) and I finished early, but I shouldn't have panicked because if you are answering the questions at a pace of about 20 to 25 seconds each you should have about 5 minutes left when you have 15 questions to go, so understand your timing for the different sections and don't freak-out like I did. This book does tell you how many questions will be in each section and how much time you have to finish each section. Well this is getting way too long, I hope it helps. Good luck!

THIS BOOK WAS NOT EVEN DESIGNED FOR THE PCAT. IF YOU READ THE COVER OF THE BOOK, IT READS "WRITING SAMPLE". THERE IS NO WRITING SAMPLE ON THE TEST. EVEN ON THE BACK COVER, IT READS "GREAT PREPARATION FOR THE VETS" OR SOMETHING. WHAT ARE THE VETS? I THOUGHT WE WERE TRYING TO STUDY FOR THE PCAT. THE OUTLINES ARE WAY TOO IN DEPTH. THE QUANTITATIVE ABILITY SECTION CONTAINS TRIG AND CAL, WHEN THE ACTUAL CANDIDATE BOOKLET SAYS THERE WON'T BE ANY ON THE TEST. IT IS AN OKAY BOOK IF YOU WANT TO CHALLENGE EVERY INCH OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, BUT NOT IF YOU ARE TRYING TO STUDY FOR THE PCAT.

I wish you could give 0 stars!

I took the PCAT in October 2002 & scored 99th percentile in all categories. Do not buy this book -- it will not help you! The outline goes way too in depth. For example, it suggests that you learn the names & structures of all 20 amino acids--you don't need to know stuff like that. It goes into a lot of organic chemistry you don't need. You don't need to know the taxonomy it insists you do. Peterson's and Barron's are much more representative of the type of information on the test.

This book is a big waste of money. Get the other 2 & work some problems from a general chem text book. Take an anatomy course before the test.

I've ordered this book from Amazon and I have to tell you that Amazon knows how to choose a good PCAT test preparation book. Despite the few errors it has, it is a great help aid in preparation for anyone who wants to take the dreaded PCAT. It has complete "quick and dirty" review of the subjects emphasized on the PCAT, it has concise and clear examples and it even gives you some test stragety. If anyone gets this book at least 6 months before taking the PCAT, there is a good chance that you will do well when you take the PCAT.