The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7455 p685
9 June 2007

An A–Z of selected clinical topics and medicines

‘Clinical pharmacy’ by Jane Wright, Alistair Howard Gray and Vincent Goodey. Pp xvii+453. Price £21.95. London: Pharmaceutical Press; 2006. ISBN 0 85369 649 7

This paperback, pocket-sized book is an A–Z of selected clinical topics and medicines. The book is directed at practising pharmacists, clinical technicians and pharmacy students. The authors have chosen what they believe are the most common medical conditions and medicines used in secondary health care practice.

The information content is practical and covers a good range of standard clinical conditions. The monographs are referenced. The majority of references for the medicines are from the summary of product characteristics and interwoven with some useful primary references.

There are only minor niggles such as:

• There is no mention of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)

• Aciclovir is missing

• With azathioprine, there is no mention of testing patients for thiopurine methyltransferase

• Mechanisms of drug action are slim throughout

With 416 pages, a list of contents and a full index, with a section to add in one’s own data, this book is good value. There is a suggestion to write in passwords used in local practice. This, unfortunately, can become a confidentiality issue if the book is lost.

An attempt to use national guidelines has been mostly successful — mostly because their usage is not consistent, eg, the epilepsy section has not included any national guidelines. It would have been useful to have some diagrams to support some of the monographs.

As a practical reference I like this book, although I would like to see a personal digital assistant version (because it is chunky). I would recommend its use to all.

Andrzej Kostrzewski
(senior principal pharmacist at St Thomas’s Hospital Teaching Unit, London)