3 resultados para Medications

em Bucknell University Digital Commons - Pensilvania - USA


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This thesis presents a metric for assessing the commonality and differentiation of packaging-family planning with application to medical labels along with supporting background research and findings. Consumable products such as medications rely on the package or label to represent the contents. Package confusion has been widely recognized as a major problem for both over-the-counter and pharmacy-dispensed medications with potentially lethal consequences. It is critical to identify a medication as a member of a product family and differentiate its contributing elements based on visual features on the package or label to avoid consumer confusion and reduce dispensing errors. Indices that indicate degrees of commonality and differentiation of features in consumer products such as batteries, light bulbs, handles, etc for platforms have been shown to benefit development of engineered product families [6]. It is possible to take a similar approach for visual features in packaging such as typography, shape/form, imagery and color to benefit packaging-family development. This thesis establishes a commonality differentiation index for prominence of visual features on over-the-counter and pharmacy-dispensed medications based on occurrence, size, and location of features. It provides a quantitative measure to assist package designers in evaluating alternatives to satisfy strategic goals and improve safety. The index is demonstrated with several medications that have been identified by the Institute for Safe Medication Practice as commonly confused.

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Since the 1980s, the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled to over 30 percent of the adult population (Thorpe, 2004). Obesity is a key contributing factor to continually rising national healthcare costs. Addressing its negative implications is essential not only from a cost perspective, but also for the betterment of our nation¿s general health and wellbeing. Obesity is reportedly associated with a 35% increase in inpatient and outpatient spending, as well as a 77% increase in related necessary medications (Sturm, 2002). Obesity, which some have argued should be classified as a disease in itself, has roughly the same association with the development of chronic health conditions as does 20 years of aging (Sturm, 2002). Defined as ambulatory care-sensitive conditions, these obesity-related chronic health diagnoses ¿ like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension ¿ are in turn the primary drivers of current healthcare spending, as well as future predicted health expenditures. It is well established that lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher rates of obesity and the subsequent development of aforementioned obesity-related conditions. Socioeconomic status has traditionally been defined by education, income, and occupation (Adler, 2002); however, this study found empirical evidence for education being the most fundamental of these three SES indicators in determining obesity outcomes. For both men and women, as education levels increased, the likelihood of an individual being obese decreased. However, with less education, there was increased disparity between the obesity rates for men and women. Women consistently saw higher rates of obesity and were more impacted in terms of obesity onset by belonging to a lower SES category than men. In addition, this study assessed whether the impact of one¿s socioeconomic status on obesity-related health outcomes (specifically the negative impact low-SES as measured by education level) has changed over time. Results deriving from annual data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for all years from 2002 to 2012 indicate that the association between low-socioeconomic status and negative health outcomes has not increased in magnitude over the past decade. Instead, obesity rates have increased across the overall U.S. adult population, most likely due to a number of larger external societal factors resulting in increased caloric intake and decreased energy expenditure across every SES group. In addition, while the association between low-SES and obesity has not worsened, a consequence of the Great Recession has been a larger percentage of the U.S. population in lower-SES, which is still consistently subject to the same worse health outcomes.

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The American Psychological Association Board of Directors established an ad hoc task force on psychopharmacology to explore the desirability and feasibility of psychopharmacology prescription privileges for psychologists. In this context, the Task Force's charges were to determine the competence criteria necessary for training psychologists to provide service to patients receiving medications and to develop and evaluate the necessary curricular models. This article summarizes the Task Force's major recommendations and provides specific information regarding its training recommendations . It is hoped that this article will encourage broad discussion of psychology's most appropriate integration of psychopharmacology knowledge and its applications into its training programs and professional activities.