Talk:Medical prescription

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[edit] Self-prescribed medication?

Don't know if this is relevant enough to include in the article, but I was wondering if an MD can write a prescription for his or herself. Are there any limitations as to what can be self-prescribed?

My Jurisdiction (New Zealand), makes it clear that although legal, this is unwise and may produce questions about a doctor's practice. The medical council (regulatory body) has a policy that strongly discourages Doctors from prescribing for themselves and their families, and points out that if they do, then their care must be of the same standard as care of any other patient in terms of keeping notes, appropriate knowledge and experience etc. Egmason 20:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The paper vs the drugs & regions

I removed the following section from this article because the article is about the piece of paper that is the prescription, not about the prescription drugs themselves. Prescription drugs is a much larger subject. Samw 03:27, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

==National Health Service Prescriptions==
In England a patient visits a doctor (usually a General practitioner in the first instance) who is able to prescribe medicines. Each item on the prescription is liable to a prescription charge of £6.40 (as of April 2004). Those requiring regular prescriptions may make a saving by purchasing a pre-payment certificate which covers the cost of all prescriptions required for four months (at a cost of £33.40) or the year (at a cost of £91.80).
The money is used to help fund the National Health Service.
The devolved legislatures of Scotland and Wales were examining, in 2004, proposals to scrap the charge and provide free prescriptions for all.


I disagree with your move of the content I added to prescription to prescription drug. It mentions no drugs in particular. It is more about charging. How can we resolve this amicably? Assuming you still feel you were right to move it, who should we ask to decide? I do not feel particularly passionate about this. But I know that, as a British national, if I were looking for more information on my prescription I would look under the article of that name, not prescription drug. --bodnotbod 12:20, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

The issue is that "prescription" can mean different things: the piece of paper, the drugs themselves or the whole system of controlling drugs. I don't have a strong opinion either on whether to include this material. I moved it because the "medical prescription" article itself is already quite long. Perhaps "medical prescription" itself could be a index/disambiguation page that links to "medical prescription - the document" for the current contents; "prescription drugs" and "prescription practices" for your material? If we're looking for a second opinion, Kpjas contributed to the original article. Samw 15:07, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
Cheers. I've asked him to take a look. I take your point. I would be tempted to start a third article if another nationality wades in with material along my lines about their country. At the moment it seems a bit overkill to have 3 articles. Let's see what Kpjas says. --bodnotbod 15:22, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

People I really don't feel entitled to be a judge in your debate. I think you have done a good job and this helpful information stays within Wikipedia. That's a good thing. My comment: it would be fine to include and compare prescription systems and regulations in other countries (healthcare systems).

The matter where the information is going to be placed seems to me relatively unimportant.

Best wishes,
Kpjas 08:36, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh well... I leave it as it is, mainly because I'm very tired right now  ;o) If somebody else comes along who feels it should be changed, they'll go ahead and do it I guess. --bodnotbod 14:06, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Origination of Rx?

So where did this term come from, and what is its literal meaning? Thanks.

See the second paragraph under format and definition; there are several explanations. I'm not aware of a definitive answer. Samw 00:49, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] mg/ug mixup

For the mixup between microgram and milligram, I couldn't find a reference for "unbelievably, deaths have resulted from pharmacists blindly following such a misreading". If you have a reference, I would love to put such a dramatic statement back in. Samw 02:15, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here's a few references. I have a bit of a flu, and was about to go sleep, but feel free to add them to the article or I will tomorrow. [1] [2]. I couldn't find a specific cite for deaths resulting from that error, but [3] refers to medical error as a leading cause of death (though presumably fairly little of that is due to perscription misreading). I guess there's no really sold proof, sorry. Feel free to leave the remark out, or tone it down to "this is likely to cause potentially fatal misunderstandings..." Pakaran 02:56, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Added compromise commentary back in Samw 14:06, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] how would you write rx for 90 percocet at 1 to 2 tablets per every 6 10 hrs as needed for pain

Percocet 1-2 tab every 6-10hrs prn for pain, mitte90
The words 'every' & 'for' are perhaps redundant, 'mitte' is often abbreviated to just 'm' or just enclosing the quantity within a circle, and sometimes the number of tablets ('tab') is abbreviated to a series of 'T' (latter abbreviation is discouraged as easy to cause confusion). Hence Rx can be abbreviated to:
Percocet T-TT 6-10hrs prn pain (90) - David Ruben Talk 03:22, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPO

Are there any Latin experts out there? What does "NPO" stand for? I've seen:

  • nil per os
  • non per os
  • nihil per orem
  • nil per oris
  • nulla per os

All translate to English as "nothing by mouth" but it would be good to get the Latin right. Thanks! Samw 15:40, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

But irrelevant to article on prescribing, as not taking anything by mout does not form part of any prescribing instruction abbreviation (but will of course be an abbreviation in teh medical record, sign placed above patient's bed etc). David Ruben Talk 12:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re List Abbreviations

This article is about prescriptions, yet the list abbreviations includes terms never found on a prescription (at least none I have ever seen) but rather in the medical notes. Examples are CHF,GI,GU,NKA,SOB,URI,UTI,VS,WBC. Would these be better moved to a new article on medical abbreviations ? David Ruben Talk 03:33, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

That this article has pretensions to a complete list of prescription abbreviations is ludicrous. I have in front of me a 470-page book of such abbreviations that does not claim to be complete. - Montréalais 06:32, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. It's absurd to call that a complete list. It's also extremely arrogant and American-centric. Sarah Ewart (Talk) 06:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legal Regulation "Exhibits"

These sections should I believe be deleted, although being bold resulted in a revertion. My reasons in increasing importance are:

  • This is a worldwide encyclopaedia, not just US-centric. This is obviously not an absolute contraindication for including a specific item, but it is worth remembering to try to keep aricles "balanced"
  • Choice of the word "Exhibit" is troubling - wikipedia is not a legal court for protagonists to present their "exhibits" of evidence. Instead wikipedia may present a few choice examples to illustrate points being made.
  • With only 5 exhibits given, it is hardly applicable to even most Americans; i.e. those that live in the other 45 states.
  • However the main problems are that it is just awful encyclopedia making:
    • It is incomprehensible (to the majority) legal-speak & listing of regulation rules, rather than this a general encyclopaedia's summarisation of knowledge. So if the purpose of these "Exhibits" is to add to the article specific information, then I think this should be done by a clear summary in general English. As an example of how other articles do this, see Murder#The United States which gives a clear explanation.
    • Verification & Citing - if however the "exhibits" are being provided more as material to which discussion in the main article may refer to, in order to verify (as this revert comment suggests), then wikipedia need not reproduce the material but rather merely provide citation details within a footnote. David Ruben Talk 13:36, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

As an example of this, Exhibit C is referred to in the text as an example of regulation setting out "... the size of the piece of paper - see Exhibit C paragraph 10" and also "... security measures may be mandated by law - see Exhibit C for sample legal specifications". Yet Exhibit C section starts, as they all do, with a reference for its own source [4] (this link nolonger seems to exist, after quick search refound as this one). So why not in the text have used:

"... the size of the piece of paper.[1]"
"... security measures may be mandated by law.[1]"

and then in a Footnotes & References section have included the desired citation details:

1 Indiana State Board of Pharmacy. Rule 34. Security Features for Prescriptions. Indiana Professional Licensing Agency.

David Ruben Talk 14:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Didn't mean to be rude; I thought you were done with the deletions and left the article in an inconsistent state. Reverting seemed the quickest fix. Yes, I'm fine with any reasonable changes. When I added these exhibits 3 years ago there were no established conventions for references and certainly none of the templates in Wikipedia today. These examples were readily available on the net at the time; if a more representative, international selection is available now, by all means use them. On the topic of descriptions versus examples, I'm a big fan of examples, especially real-life examples. Descriptions are needed to make the explanation generically applicable, but there's nothing like specifics. Finally, I'm not an American, never lived in the US and am not in the medical professional. That said, I don't think articles should be "dumbed down" for a general audience. I do agree progressive disclosure should apply to make the article as accessible as possible. Wikipedia has articles on the most obscure technical subjects (c.f. voigt notation) and there's no reason why this article (or a refactored article) can't covered legal details of prescriptions in gory detail. Samw 15:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks for comments, yes I think I too may have acted similarly if positions reversed :-) Certainly don't intend for "dumbing down" - I'm discussing issues of encyclopedia layout and certainly not of article/subject description, which I think is good in this article. All of description re features that get specified (form size, security measures, prescription information, patient details, pharmacist handling) should be included. It is just that having described a particular feature, the example given (as required by WP:Cite and WP:Verify) can be provided now by linking to a footnote that cites a source and provides a relevant web link (as is possible for all 5 'Exhibits'). I appreciate the problems prior to footnotes, external links and citation templates being introduced into wikipedia - must have made citing sources very hard to have to find, select & copy appropriate segments and markup accordingly :-) David Ruben Talk 03:16, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I, too, dislike the word "Exhibit" being used in this context. And I agree it would be far better dealt with as footnotes rather than copy and pasting in the actual text.
Above comment posted by User:Sarah Ewart 03:01, 16 April 2006
Yes, I know it's policy to sign talk page comments and I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever forgotten to do it. Sorry. Sarah Ewart (Talk) 03:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split out Appendix 1?

It might be more convenient to split out Appendix 1 into a subsidiary article. This would be partially to facilitate linking to it from the category, such that people looking for the translations of these abbreviations don't have to find this page. It seems inelegant to link to the main article from the category page. What do you think? Octopod 10:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

hi

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