Prescribing Medical Drugs: Leave It to The Experts

Am I stating the obvious? To some I might, but there is more to it than you might think off first hand. As you know, I am no friend of self-appointed or media proclaimed experts, but there are experts in this world who earn being called experts. Most people tend to forget their field of expertise as ‘liberalisation of the market’ tries to reduce them to mere shopkeepers. It’s time to take a serious look at the devaluation of pharmaceutical experts.

My mother had a saying: ‘If you want to be sick, see a doctor; if you want to be healthy, see an apothecary.’ In many countries, doctors are not only allowed to prescribe medical drugs to their patients, but to actually sell them at the same time. Why this is so is anybody’s guess, because they studied medicine, i.e. the diagnosis of illnesses, but had only a short brush-up on pharmaceutical issues. On the other hand we have the apothecary with a profound knowledge and an extensive study in pharmaceuticals and interactions of components and active substances.

Why then do we trust the doctor to know which medication is good for us? His prescription is a good guess, but the expert is to be found in the pharmacy. It is often stated that you should mention all medicines you are currently taking to your doctor. But it would be much more important to mention them to your apothecary when picking up a newly prescribed drug, as he is the one who really is able to assess what interaction they will have. Don’t just walk into a pharmacy to buy, avail yourself of the knowledge available and make sure you get the right things to help you feel better.

Talking of medicines you should mention, there is a further pitfall in the use of the word medicine. Correctly stated, you should mention all pharmaceutically active substances, and that doesn’t only mean medicines you buy of the shelf. There are many plants which contain pharmaceutically active substances and sound quite harmless. While Ginkgo and St. John’s Wort might ring a bell, there is nettle tea, peppermint tea, verbena, and camomile, to name just a few, which have one or several pharmaceutically active components. There are many food supplements, from natural or artificial sources, that contain traces of plants with pharmaceutical components.

It is worthwhile to make a detailed list of all the stuff you drink, munch, or swallow during the day in the name of healthy living. The apothecary will know which are important. And when adding a new fad to your daily routine, take the five minutes to go and check it with your apothecary. Better safe than sorry.

Many people think that apothecaries earn too much money. They don’t if you use them for what they are paid for primarily (by the margins they make on the products they sell), ask, and if necessary ask again, they are the true experts on what influence products have on your health and body. Make sure that the treatment you receive and additional steps you undertake yourself are a perfect fit for you. It’s definitely more important than the fit of your shoes, and most take out time to find the perfect fit there.

Every hospital employs apothecaries. They are not there to dole out the tablets, any literate person could do that, they are there to catch prescription blunders committed by doctors. They are, in every sense of the word, your life insurance while you stay in a hospital.

You think that on-line pharmacies have cheaper prices than your local pharmacy? It should now be obvious why. If you moan about high prices, don’t blame the local pharmacy, blame the pharmaceutical companies who, in the so called free market, run virtual monopolies under the guise of patent laws.