background health literacy presents an enormous challenge in the delivery of effective healthcare and quality outcomes. we evaluated the impact of low health literacy (lhl) on healthcare utilization and healthcare expenditure.   methods database analysis used medical expenditure panel survey (meps) from 2005-2008 which provides nationally representative estimates of healthcare utilization and e...

introduction: diseases of the dental pulp and periapical tissues are chiefly caused by microorganisms. antibiotics are used in some endodontic cases; however, successful cases can predominantly be achieved by mechanical and chemical cleaning of the canal or surgical intervention. materials & methods: the aim of this study was to determine the knowledge of general dental practitioners (gdps) in ...

this commentary discusses pertinent issues from hyosun kim’s paper on online prescription drug promotion. the study is well-designed and the findings highlight some of the consequences of the food and drug administration’s (fda’s) decision to deregulate online advertising of prescription drugs. while kim’s findings confirm some of the early concerns, they also provide a perspective of implement...

background: direct thrombin inhibitors and factor xa inhibitors are gaining popularity as alternatives to warfarin for patients requiring anticoagulation. toxicity due to these medications is difficult to manage because overdose experience is very limited and there is no clear guidance on when or whether to use antidote in this setting. case presentation: a 50-year-old man with normal renal fun...

medication errors and adverse drug events can bring about hospitalization, permanent injury, or death. patients due to lack of adequate understanding of instruction may unintentionally misuse a prescribed medicine. the aims of the study were to examine whether patients with low back pain were correctly able to understand physician's instructions regarding drug use and also to identify influenci...

implementation of electronic prescribing system can overcome many problems of the paper prescribing system, and provide numerous opportunities of more effective and advantageous prescribing. successful implementation of such a system requires complete and deep understanding of work content, human force, and workflow of paper prescribing. the current study was designed in order to model the curr...

conclusions our results suggested that the prevalence of prescription drugs, alcohol and illicit substance use was relatively low, though still significant, among iranian students, which was strongly associated with family and friends’ use. the findings of this research can be used for planning and evaluating interventions by considering the risk factors and protective factors in universities. ...

background and aim: giving improper prescriptions is common among medical practitioners, mostly graduates, in most communities even developed countries. so far, to our knowledge, no study has been conducted on prescription writing of graduate midwifery students. therefore, this study aimed to detect prescription writing errors of midwifery students in common gynecological problems. methods: in ...

one hundred and fifteen prescriptions which were purposely written in toxic and potentially fatal dose of different medicine (mainly digitoxin) were sent to pharmacies throughout iran. all pharmacies filled up the prescription and only one pharmacist made notice of dangerous dose. the pharmacist in the drugstores in iran is forcefully employed by the owner of the pharmacy which is required by l...

the goal of this study is to identify the types of potentially inappropriate drugs prescribed by the medical specialists of isfahan province to elderly patients. a number of 31,254 randomly selected prescriptions from medical specialists of isfahan province were reviewed for elderly patients who were insured by the social security organization. three thousand and seven prescriptions were identi...