Drug misuse

Drug misuse

Drug abuse is the misuse of recreational or therapeutic drugs that may lead to addiction or dependence, serious physiological injury (such as damage to kidneys, liver, heart), psychological harm (abnormal behaviour patterns, hallucinations, memory loss), or death....
Drug misuse

Prescribing

Prescribing medicines is the intervention that most doctors make to restore or preserve the health of their patients and is the major tool used by modern healthcare systems to improve public health. Prescribing also carries significant risks related to adverse drug...
Drug misuse

Evidence-based medicine

Evidence-based prescribing can be defined as making prescribing decisions on the basis of a systematic review and critical appraisal of clinical research findings in order to provide the optimum standard of care for individual patients. In practice, individual...
Drug misuse

Medicines management

Many medicines meet the three key regulatory requirements of quality, safety and efficacy. National formularies usually list several thousand licensed medicines and although prescribers are legally entitled to prescribe any of them it is desirable to limit the choice...