The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7283 p86
24 January 2004

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Letters to the Editor

Decision support

No need for such pseudotechnical terms

From Mr J. Wilson, MRPharmS

As the author of the Broad spectrum article “Crying wolf” (PJ, 22 November 2003, p708), I wish to take strong issue with Robin Glasspoole and Hillary Judd (PJ, 3/10 January, p15). They assert that “no two health care practitioners agree on the need for an alert — if it is known to them, it is ‘noise’; if not, the alert is required”. My concern is that the “noise” actually consists of real trivia, some examples of which I referred to in my article, and not of those interactions which are well known to me and to other pharmacists.

Recently, for instance, I received a prescription calling for a dose of 60mg furosemide. I dispensed this as 40mg tablets plus 20mg tablets and the computer solemnly informed me that frusemide interacted with frusemide.

We do not need to invent pseudotechnical terms such as “decision support” for this. All we need is to have the mess cleaned up and only those interactions likely to be of real clinical importance to appear on our dispensary computer screens (or surgery computer screens, for that matter).

John Wilson
Arnold, Nottinghamshire

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