PURPOSE To understand how the technology of electronic prescription (e Rx) can transform the community pharmacist's role through its effects on professionalization. We define professionalization as a pharmaceutical practice centred on clinical activities and made possible by the establishment of professional pharmaceutical services. METHODS We asked 12 community pharmacists who had participat...

The global population of multimorbid older people is growing steadily. Multimorbidity is the principal cause of complex polypharmacy, which in turn is the prime risk factor for inappropriate prescribing and adverse drug reactions and events. Those who prescribe for older frailer multimorbid people are particularly prone to committing prescribing errors of various kinds. The causes of prescribin...

BACKGROUND Prescribers' inappropriate use of the free-text Notes field in new electronic prescriptions can create confusion and workflow disruptions at receiving pharmacies that often necessitates contact with prescribers for clarification. The inclusion of inappropriate patient direction (Sig) information in the Notes field is particularly problematic. OBJECTIVE We evaluated the effect of a ...

BACKGROUND Concerns relating to increased use of psychotropic medication contrast with those of under-treatment and under-recognition of common mental disorders in children and young people (CYP) across developed countries. Little is known about the indications recorded for antidepressant prescribing in primary care in CYP. METHOD This was an electronic cohort study of routinely collected pri...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence and incidence of ADHD medication prescribing, by age and gender, from 2005 to 2015 in Canadian primary care. METHOD A population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted to evaluate the prescribing of ADHD medications between 2005 and 2015 using electronic medical record data. Yearly prevalence and incidence of ADHD medicati...

Congress reveals the results of an electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) pilot project that supports the adoption of new e-prescribing standards. These standards, required by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, would help cut both medication errors and health care costs. The pilot project demonstrated that three initial standards are already capable of supporting e-prescribing transactions...