Series: Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs | Publication Date: December 3, 2002
For more than twenty-five years The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs has helped families make sense of the overwhelming and often contradictory flood of information about their prescriptions. Filled with critical health information, this fully revised and updated edition provides more detailed and comprehensive profiles on the most important drugs in current use than any other reference source. You'll find:
the benefits and risks of each drug highlighted in quick, easy-to-read reference boxes
how each drug works and what to do if you miss a dose
comprehensive safety information -- including the latest details on dangerous drug combinations and interactions with herbal medicines
special precautions to take if you're over sixty, pregnant, or breastfeeding
cost-saving advice for both consumers and medical professionals
16 pages of color photographs of common prescription drugs
James J. Rybacki, Pharm.D., is president of The Clearwater Group, an international therapeutic, professional, education, research, and management concern; a clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland; a national adviser to the American Heart Association; and a nationally recognized speaker on medical adherence. He lives in Maryland.
About the Author JAMES J. RYBACKI, Pharm.D., was born in Oneonta, New York. He received his prepharmacy education at Creighton University and his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Pharmacy, in Omaha. Dr. Rybacki has more than three decades of hospital and clinical experience that include early efforts in gas-liquid chromatography research characterizing human drug metabolites, and data collection for the College of American Pathologists to establish normal values for laboratory studies.
He is the editor of www.EssentialGuideToPrescriptionDrugs.com and is a member of the clinical faculty at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and has provided clinical rounding and hospital experience for Pharm.D. and bachelor students. He presently teaches a Drug Information rotation for Pharm.D. students at The Clearwater Group. He is board certified in pain management at the Diplomat level by the American Academy of Pain Management, and provides ongoing clinical pain management and medicine information nationwide.
He is a guest lecturer and researcher at the Department of Family Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is a member of The National Council of Hospice Professionals, the American Society for Preventive Cardiology, The National Lipid Association and sits on the National Advisory Council of the Mended Hearts International. Dr. Rybacki was actively involved in the post marketing monitoring of medicines via The Drug Surveillance Network, a nationwide association of clinical pharmacists, and he is an approved External New Drug Application reviewer for the Canadian Drug Ministry. He lives in Maryland.
Dr. Rybacki's efforts in drug information and clinical pharmacy include many years of active practice, including infectious disease, pharmacokinetic, nutrition support, pain management, and pharmacological consultations. Through an Occupational Health Unit, he has offered independent pain management and pharmacological consultations nationwide. He has also advised the World Health Organization's Expert Committee regarding revisions as well as the selection of drugs to be listed in The Use of Essential Drugs and is an assistant editor for the Drugdex drug information system. His past role as a Vice President Clinical Services bought him added expertise in overseeing occupational health, physical medicines, laboratory services, imaging, cardiology, respiratory therapy, cancer programs, and continuing medical education. He served as conference coordinator for the first and second annual Dorchester General Hospital Pain conferences and as seminar coordinator for the eastern shore of Maryland for the "Take Control" physician and public pain education programs with Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Rybacki is now president of The Medicine Information Institute--headquartered in Maryland. He provides drug information support and clinical pharmacy services to physician groups, consumers, and employers; holds seminars and continuing education meetings on diabetes, cardiovascular disease, infectious disease, adherence, osteoporosis, pain management, women's health, and therapeutics; provides information support to insurance companies and HMOs; provides on-site hospital consulting on JCAHCO pain standards, optimizing use of medicines and other programs, produces educational tapes and television programming on medicines; designs clinical programs; conducts independent pharmacological evaluations and has most recently been the Health System Director of Pharmacy at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
He served on the Patient Education and Professional Education Committees of the American Heart Association on a national level, was the first Pharm.D. Committee member of the American Heart Association Pharmaceutical Roundtable and is actively designing research involving how, why, and when to enhance the way people take their medicines and decrease risk factors for cardiovascular disease. He is a strong advocate of a multilevel/interdisciplinary approach to help patients get the most from their medicines and is designing projects to involve pharmacists/physicians/PAs/nurses/nurse practitioners/cardiac rehab programs at the practice site itself in helping patients and families understand risk factors, proven medicines and how to get the best results over time. Medicines and Your Family, National Treatment Guidelines was the first publication resulting from this novel focus and the second edition, Heart Attack transition was guest edited by Roger S. Blumenthal, MD and is now available on Amazon.
He was selected for full membership in the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, is a Certified Clinical Densitometrist (CCD) through the Society for Clinical Densitometry, served a two-year term appointed by the governor of Maryland on a state-wide Osteoporosis Task Force in Maryland (see www.strongerbones.org). He is a lifetime member of Who's Who in Global Business. Dr. Rybacki is director of clinical research, therapeutics, and outcomes at the Medicine Information Institute--an interdisciplinary consulting and education group. Dr. Rybacki has been a frequent guest on Comcast's Family Talk live television program as well as their Real Life TV. He is now the writer and host of a patient education series called Medicines and Your Family with Dr. Jim Rybacki. You may have also heard him as the voice and writer of the Bayer Aspirin Pharmacist Report (a short-segment program on preventing a first heart attack). Catch Dr. Jim on TV, the Web, and on the radio (www.EssentialGuideToPrescriptionDrugs.com!
An active national speaker, Dr. Rybacki gave the keynote address at the 2004 Mended Hearts Leadership Conference, The MCV Update for Clinicians talking about Women and cardiology Disparities,spoke at the Simmons Cnacer Center in Dallas Texas on adherence in cancer treatments,was the Mended Hearts spokesperson for the AACE State of Diabetes Complications in America campaign and spoke at the University of Maryland Department of Imaging Spring Symposium on Safe Use of Sterile Contrast Agents. He was a member of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Distinguished faculty in HIV faculty from 1994 to 2003, lectured across the country and now speaks on heart disease. He has jointly authored several articles in professional journals on use of medicines in infectious diseases, critical care, therapeutics, and cost containment and adherence. The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs, first published in 1977, was co-authored by Dr. Rybacki since 1994, before he assumed full authorship in 1996. Dr. Rybacki leveraged his expertise on medicines to The Medicine Man, a nationwide live radio show, which was developed, written, produced, and hosted by Dr. Rybacki in 1995. He is the original writer and host of the American Pharmaceutical Association's The Pharmacist Minute radio program, and is the writer, producer, and host of Medicines and Your Family with Dr. Jim Rybacki. He is a frequent guest on The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU (NPR), AARP Prime Time and others.
Dr. Rybacki created a new book supported by an unrestricted educational grant from the Mended Hearts via Bristol-Myers Squibb/ Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership. The book is called Medicines and Your Family, National Treatment Guidelines and has had more than 100,000 copies of the first edition given to heart patients and their families by The Mended Hearts, Inc. (www.mendedhearts.org). The first update was released in 2011 and benefits from the thoughts and input from Dr. Blumenthal at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Rybacki thinks that the best colleague any doctor can have is a more fully informed patient. Dr. Rybacki brings late-breaking information to people via popular sites on the World Wide Web at www.EssentialGuideToPrescriptionDrugs.com.
This review is from: The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs 2003: Everything You Need to Know for Safe Drug Use (Paperback)
If you take any prescription drugs this is the book for you! I've seen many drug info books and none can compare with the info in this book. The best thing in the book is info on interactions between what drugs you are taking and other drugs, herbal supplements or OTC medicines.
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A good reference book for anyone that has a number of prescriptions and would like to learn how they work and of what to be aware. It does very well as a family reference book. It isn't comprehensive, but a book like that would be too daunting (and too thick!).
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This review is from: The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs 2003: Everything You Need to Know for Safe Drug Use (Paperback)
This is an excellent book for explaining the intricacies of individual prescription drugs i.e. costs, benefits, risks, indications and contraindications
Before any drug is taken, the patient should have qualitative information on its effectiveness and side-effects so that medical attention can be sought early enough for a physician to intervene. This book provides quality information on individual drugs so that consumers have a single source to evaluate effectiveness. A pharmacist should provide this information; however, this text lists the data in an easily readable form without too much medical jargon.
It would be helpful to have a comparison with the alternative medicinal protocols utilizing natural substances. There is a difference between organically recognizable substances that are natural derivatives versus the inorganic substances of prescription drugs. Inorganic substances are not necessarily recognizable by the body and may not break down as easily into substances that the body can deal with as easily as the organically based treatments. Nonetheless, this work is still helpful for consumers taking the pharmaceutical approaches.
This work would be most effective if the patient utilized it in conjunction with his/her physician medical encounter. Some medicinal protocols can be accomplished via diet, exercise and the use of nutrition to accomplish medicinal goals. All of these approaches should be discussed with your physician before embarking on a long-term decision to select a course of action.
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