The Food and Drug Administration website provides a variety of useful resources related to medication prescribing at http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/, including this series on drug safety:
- Buying & Using Medicine Safely
- Drug Safety Communications
- Index to Drug-Specific Information
- Medication Guides
- Medication Health Fraud
- Postmarket Drug Safety Information for Patients and Providers
Staying up-to-date about prescription medications requires access to high-quality resources. The Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) is an excellent source, but may not be available in every practice setting. Here are two examples of free reputable online sources:
- Through the National Library of Medicine, provided as public service without any ads, at http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/about.cfm, you can access the full prescribing information for most brand and generic drugs, including package insert information.
- An online version of the Physician’s Desk Reference is available free of charge at http://www.pdr.net/ for users who complete a simple registration process. The online PDR also provides free CME credits on product labeling and drug alerts.