Proceedings of the Western Pharmacology Society
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Proc. West. Pharmacol. Soc. · Jan 2007
ReviewDrug administration is an essential clinical competence.
Quotidian clinical practice implies at least four essential activities: i) integration of diagnosis; ii) design of the therapeutic regimen; iii) following up therapeutic outcomes; and, iv) keeping updated on medical knowledge. The therapeutic regimen may include the use of drugs among other forms of treatment. A competent clinician is expected to be knowledgeable, skillful, dutiful and altruistic when deciding to use drugs. ⋯ However, an integrated view on how BMPK relates to their clinical application is not clearly stated. By the same token, legal and ethical aspects of drug administration are narrowed to prescription writing skills, either for the patient or for the clinical file; thus, attenuating the appraisal of the impact on therapeutic adherence of physicians' communication skills, as well as availability and/or accessibility of recommended drugs. These issues are obviously related to therapeutic outcome but their integrated articulation occurs only if drug administration is considered as an essential clinical competence.
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Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a chronic neuromuscular disease which leads to varying degrees of weakness in the skeletal muscles. Some of the symptoms of the disorder include weakness of the eye muscles, difficulty in swallowing and slurred speech. When only the muscles of the eyes are affected, the illness is termed ocular myasthenia, which is often characterized by abrupt onset of diplopia and ptosis of the eyelid. ⋯ His symptoms improved dramatically after treatment with Acetyl cholinesterase (AchE) inhibitors and steroids, regaining much of his ocular mobility and ability to walk without gait imbalance. At follow-up visits, the patient remained healthy with no evidence development of other myasthenic signs. This case is atypical since ocular MG does not normally occur in the absence of other myasthenic forms.