Medical Prescription
A prescription (℞) is a health-care programme that governs the plan of care for an individual patient and is implemented by a qualified practitioner. A qualified practitioner might be a physician, dentist, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, psychologist, or other health care provider. Prescriptions may include orders to be performed by a patient, caretaker, nurse, pharmacist, physician, other therapist, or by automated equipment, such as an intravenous infusion pump. Formerly, prescriptions often included detailed instructions regarding compounding of medications but as medications have increasingly become pre-packaged manufactured products, the term "prescription" now usually refers to an order that a pharmacist dispense and that a patient take certain medications. Prescriptions have legal implications, as they may indicate that the prescriber takes responsibility for the clinical care of the patient and in particular for monitoring efficacy and safety. As medical practice has become increasingly complex, the scope of meaning of the term "prescription" has broadened to also include clinical assessments, laboratory tests, and imaging studies relevant to optimizing the safety or efficacy of medical treatment.
Read more about Medical Prescription: Format and Definition, In Continental Europe, Non-prescription Drug Prescriptions, Related Usage of The Term prescription, History, Use of Technology, Exhibit A: Sample Legal Definition of A Prescription, Exhibit B: Sample Legal Requirement For Storage of Prescriptions, Exhibit C: Sample Legal Requirements For Security and Format, Exhibit D: Sample Requirements On Information Added By The Pharmacist, Exhibit E: New Jersey Requirements For Prescription Blanks
Famous quotes containing the words medical and/or prescription:
“Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)