Pharmacy Books

There is a good reason this book was initially pulled from a lot of college bookstore shelves upon its release: Our faculty found it to be lacking in areas of specifics and details; areas crucial to the health care industry. My staff and I might receommend this book to first year nursing students as a guide used strictly for overview.

I am really suprised. Dr Koren is considered one of the world experts in toxicology during pregnancy and lactation. I expected the book to be excellent. Unfortunately I had to rate it 1 star. I should have rated it zero stars because it is so important for pregnant people to have the best available information. It is my opinion that there is unacceptable misinformation in this book. Even the pharmaceutical company's own web page has more up-to-date information. I wouldn't be so upset if the copyright date was 1960 but the book was published this year. I do not recommend this book for anybody seeking correct information about medication during pregnancy. Accurate information is especially important during pregnancy when inaccurate information can lead to serious complications up to and including the death of both mother and child.
S. Withers, PA-C

This book is way overpriced for the information that it delivers. Besides being out-of-date, it focuses on what might be called discovery outsourcing with minimal information about preclinical development outsourcing. The author has littl to add, though he does explain preclinical research and the factors involved in its success rather lucidly. It's certainly not use the price they want for it. Find it used for less than $50 and it will be a reasonable purchase.

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.

Pharmacy Calculations, 2nd Edition


We were required to use this book at a pharmacy technician community college course in Arizona. In my opinion,based on hours of study and comparison to other pharmacy tech math books out there, this book was worthless to me! Why? Math errors contained in the book! Math errors in a pharmacy math book? You read right!

How can students learn basic pharmacy math when the answers in the book are wrong! Even the instructor admitted that they were incorrect, but shrugged her shoulders, blaming the district.

I do not feel that studying this book will not help you pass the certified pharmacy exam. You will need a few good supplemental books. I invested in other books and passed the PTCB exam on the first try. Is it thanks to this book? No way.

Apparently, local community college districts pick the books, but any pharmacist or experienced pharmacy technician will agree that this book is laden with pharm math errors. If you are assigned homework in this book and you are only given the answers to the odd or even numbers, if the answers are incorrect, how can you learn? The answer is painfully obvious.

If you have a choice, pick another pharmacy math book to learn from. Ironically, this a 2nd edition book, not a 1st edition book.

Believe it or not, there are many better pharm math books than this one. Buyers beware! Content is KEY in any textbook, and even with tighter editing, I would not recommend this book in any way, shape, or form.

--Tina Velgos

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???)