Customer Reviews

Olson: Clinical Pharmacology Made Ridiculously Simple (Edition 3)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was disappointed in the book I hoped to learned about the fundamentals of clincal pharmacology, but all I got was page after page of tables of drugs, mechanism of action, undesirable effects, etc. I could have gotten that from the PDR or the Merck Manual. I learned more of what I was after just by reading wikipedia (unfortunately, after I bought the book). It was more on clinical practice than how clinical pharmacology is used to study new compounds or drug interactions, etc.

While in school, I enjoyed the pictures and such. But found the book tough to learn from. Maybe I don't handle gigantic lists that well.
Now that I'm out practicing, I like the book alot as a quick reference/refresher.

Great charts and they group the meds together by class. They give you a quick patho review too. This book really helps with memorization and it really is simple.

The book list drugs in tabels with the occasional paragraph above it trying to explain something. There are practically NO memory aids like in the microbiology series which had pictures and mnemonics etc.. this book it tiny, over priced and a lot of medical school professors have warned against this book

This is a wonderful book for those who are interested in the basics of pharmacology. Every chapter covers a different aspect of the body and the effects that pharmaceuticals have on it. Covering difficult concepts about the central, peripheral and autonomic nervous systems, the book utilizes charts and "cute" animations to illustrate how certain drugs act on specific receptors. In a sense this book could be considered to be a version of Cliff's Notes for pharmacology students.

However, while the book is straightforward and correct about the actions of the categories of drugs (for example, beta blockers), there are several errors in the pharmaceutical charts regarding the specific actions and side effects of certain medcines. Please check with your professors or a more knowledgable authority concerning these errors.

I bought this book after using a friend's copy of "Clinical Anatomy made Ridiculously Simple". I loved the little cartoons and mnemonics for remembering the thousands of new terms in anatomy, and thought this style would be great for another memorization subject like pharmacology. However, this book uses none of those little tricks. It is page after page of tables comparing one drug to another. I already have that in my pharmacology lectures! Don't waste your money on this book.

I'm not sure how this book ended up in the Ridiculously Simple series. Maybe because of brevity with the subject? It reads like an abbreviated text. It does put some abbreviated information in table form, but it's overly complicated and doesn't streamline the information any better than a typical, bloviating text book does. Not interesting. Few helpful pointers. Just the same information presented in a slightly different way. Well, almost the same. It actually gets quite a few things wrong. For instance, it states that D1 and D2 receptors are both inhibitory. It even places emphasis on this in the text with Italics. In fact, D1 receptors are excitatory, but D2 receptors are inhibitory. This is CRITICAL to know in order to understand movement disorders such as Parkinsonism so you can know how the drugs work. Another example, it indicates that the half life for fluoxetine is 48 - 72 hours. While technically correct, the pharmacokinetics appear to be nonlinear resulting in a longer half life with more than one dose, which is how a patient is going to take it. Further, its first metabolite is norfluoxetine, which is similarly as potent as fluoxetine, but has a longer half life. They don't present this critical information in this book. Another incorrect statement: They claim that drug tolerance to psychoactive substances such as alcohol is due to cytochrome P450 inactivation. This is not correct. While cytochrome P450 is the most important factor in the liver's metabolizing of many substances, tolerance is actually a purely psychological factor. Studies have shown that tolerance occurs when drug use occurs in the same surroundings repeatedly. If a person who has tolerance to the drug is moved to unfamiliar surroundings, all tolerance to the substance is gone. With abuse, and increasing use of a substance, of course cytochrome P450 will build up to handle the increased load, but simply having an understanding of Michaelis-Menten kinetics shows that there is a maximum rate that will be achieved, and the deactivation rate of compounds will not proceed any further based on just increasing the enzyme to match the substrate concentration increases. Therefore, although the person can consume more of the substance, this doesn't mean that they have a tolerance. They get just as intoxicated, they just don't overdose as easily.

I ordered this book with hopes that it would help me with my pharmacology class. It does list some medications with some brand names. It does not address any information about the math, or dosing involved in pharmacology that a nurse or surgical technologist might have to work out during surgery or otherwise. I am really embarrassed about the amount of money I spent having this book expressed to me.

This book was supposed to new...it was...but had over 10 blank pages. It must have been a defective book not good enought to sell to retailers. Missing key pages of detailed content in a pharmacology book makes it useless.