procedures).
Foreword
This foreword is dedicated to mum.
Welcome to this very creative, special book. This guide to drug classification approaches the topic from a refreshingly new direction. Its innovative use of colour‐coding enables the reader to visualise drug names in a way that makes recognising individual drugs and categorising them easier, almost effortless.
Hello, I'm Helen, a registered adult nurse by profession, a former Practice Education Facilitator (PEF) and currently a lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Liverpool. In my roles both as a PEF and as a university lecturer, I have had the pleasure of working alongside Mark – the author – and we have become trusted friends. Mark is a practice assessor who has written and presented lessons on medicines management that are consistently rated highly by the students. One of Mark's finest qualities is his willingness to listen to the needs of his students, helping them acquire new skills, knowledge and confidence. His dedicated engagement with learners was the catalyst that led to the creation of this book. The care and attention that he has shown in writing the book is remarkable. To outline Mark's commitment, the draft template of the book took nine months to compile – which he did in his own time – whilst working as a nurse and Practice Development Leader on a busy dialysis unit; all this in addition to being a carer to an increasingly frail family member. Delighted to have been asked to write this foreword, I recommend this book to anyone involved in medicines management or anyone keen to learn more about medication.
Helen Potter RGN, BSc (Hon), MEd, FHEA,
Lecturer, School of Health Sciences,
Institute of Clinical Sciences,
University of Liverpool.
Introduction
It is often said that all the really important secrets are ones that are ‘hidden in plain sight’. This book is designed to make it easier to learn about medication by showing you how to visually deconstruct drug names in ways that reveal the meanings that can lie concealed within them.
The importance of medication administration as a health intervention is growing. Demographic changes mean that more people are taking increasing numbers of drugs as part of increasingly complex therapeutic regimes (Royal Pharmaceutical Society, 2016). It has never been more important for all those involved in healthcare to have a thorough grounding in the basics of drug classification. Nursing students have long reported that they find medication management one of the most challenging aspects of their training; and many continue to feel that insufficient time is dedicated to pharmacology in the inevitably crowded pre‐registration nursing syllabus (King, 2004; Manias, 2009; Dilles et al., 2011; Pearson et al., 2018). This book is unlike other books on pharmacology for students. It emerged from a series of clinical tutorials developed for nursing students working and learning on acute hospital wards – on the ‘front line’ so to speak. It was devised by a nursing assessor in response to requests from students to help them become more proficient in drug administration; the students having asked for ways to make it easier for them to identify and classify drugs. The students also asked for help with pronouncing some of the more unpronounceable drug names. This is a common but often overlooked concern. Anxiety about feeling foolish due to mispronouncing drug names can often stop students from asking the sort of questions that they should be asking. This book helps with all of these issues.
This book is a directory of drugs, not a formulary; and so it avoids duplicating the functions of the British National Formulary (BNF) (Joint Formulary Committee, 2019) or similar tomes. Consequently, it does not profess to offer guidance to those who prescribe drugs; neither does it catalogue drug dosages, side effects or interactions. Such information is readily available in a host of other books on pharmacology. This book is different. It was tailor‐made in a format chosen by nursing students to meet particular educational needs identified by nursing students. This helped to ensure that the book's focus remains fixed on drug names and its demystifying and drug‐classifying aims.
Name stems are the crucial element in drug recognition. Being able to categorise medication on a prescription list – by identifying medicines by the letters used in the stem of their name (i.e., the drug's prefix or suffix) is like finding a key that unlocks all sorts of useful information. Knowing, for example, that only sulfonylureas have generic names beginning with ‘gli‐’ or that only antiviral drugs have generic names ending in ‘‐vir’ enables you to instantly recognise glipizide (see Chapter 8) as a drug to treat diabetes and aciclovir (see Chapter 9) as a drug to treat a viral infection… and knowledge, as they say, is empowering. The guide lists more than 700 drugs subdivided into more than 200 drug groups, categorised by class or usage. This book is intended for general guidance only, not as a way to identify every drug in every drug group; nevertheless, it should be invaluable to you while you are getting to know your drugs more thoroughly. So, if drugs and the way they work is still something of a mystery to you, then this little book will give you a head start and help you identify most of the key drugs that you will need to know. We hope that The Drug Recognition Guide will make pharmacology make sense to you and so play its part in helping you become a more knowledgeable and safer practitioner.
Drug names: generic/proprietary
Most drugs will have at least three names: a chemical name, a non‐proprietary (or generic) name and a proprietary (or brand) name. To prevent confusion to those who prescribe, dispense or administer drugs, the World Health Organisation (WHO) assigns a unique name to each and every medicine known as a recommended International Non‐proprietary Name (rINN). Recommended INNs are public property and promote standardisation and uniformity in regard to the identity of generic drugs all around the world.
Note that while a drug will have only one generic name – which will be recognisably similar in most parts of the world (allowing solely for differences in spelling when written in different languages) – this is not the case with proprietary names. A drug's proprietary name is the trademarked brand name given to it by the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the drug. Some older generic medicines that are out of patent may be made by a variety of different drug companies, which means that the same generic drug may have a variety of different brand names. The drug names that appear in this book refer – unless specifically stated otherwise – to generic INNs only.
Comparison of rINNs in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian
Atenolol (Eng; French; Spanish; Port); atenololo (Ital). Cimetidine (Eng; Fr); cimetidina (Sp; Port; Ital). Diclofenac (Eng; Fr; Ital); diclofenaco (Sp; Port). Furosemide (Eng; Fr; Ital); furosemida (Sp; Port). Omeprazole (Eng; Fr); omeprazol (Sp; Port; Ital). Penicillin (Eng); pénicilline (Fr); penicilina (Sp; Port). Prednisolone (Eng; Fr); prednisolona (Sp; Port; Ital). Tramadol (Eng; Fr; Sp; Port); tramadolo (Italian).
Drug names and design motifs
Drug companies use design motifs (in advertising, on promotional products and literature and on the drug box itself) in order to highlight the brand name of their particular product and to make the drug's name more distinct and recognisable. The logos and motifs used include emphasising the drug's brand name by using odd combinations of upper and lower‐case lettering; some divide the drug's name into segments or use different colours for each letter; some have parts of the name in italics; some use varying typeface styles, etc. The Drug Recognition Guide uses similar techniques (specifically, the colour highlighting of drug prefixes
