Premium
Harms from medicines: inevitable, in error or intentional
Author(s) -
Ferner Robin E.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
british journal of clinical pharmacology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.216
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1365-2125
pISSN - 0306-5251
DOI - 10.1111/bcp.12156
Subject(s) - harm , clinical pharmacology , drug reaction , drug , medicine , do no harm , adverse effect , perspective (graphical) , intensive care medicine , adverse drug reaction , pharmacology , psychiatry , psychology , computer science , social psychology , artificial intelligence
Rational therapeutics requires a balance between benefits and harms. (i) Harm may be inevitable. Some adverse drug reactions cannot be predicted or prevented. (ii) Some harm occurs in error when a medicine is wrongly formulated, prescribed, dispensed or administered. Adverse drug reactions that might have been prevented, for example, by monitoring, fall into this category. (iii) Rarely, harm is inflicted deliberately, for example, in murder by poisoning. Here I consider adverse drug reactions, errors and deliberate drug‐induced harm from the perspective of a clinical pharmacologist.