Drug Information Resources

The question is that what are drug information resources? Its purpose to provide relevant data about drugs and drug used in patients. There are three sources of drug information.

1-      Journals (Primary Sources)

2-      Indexing and abstracting services (Secondary Sources)

3-      Textbook databases (Tertiary Sources)

Journals (Primary Sources):

Journals provide us more current information about drugs and it should be a source of answering therapeutic questions. A major drawback of primary source is that there is no guarantee that the article is accurate.

Indexing and abstracting services (Secondary Sources):

It is a valuable tool for quick and selective screening of the primary literature for specific information, data, citation and articles. A major drawback of secondary sources is that there is not enough information.

Textbook databases (Tertiary Sources):

There are two things in the tertiary sources.

1-      Textbooks

2-      Databases

Textbooks can provide easy and convenient access to a broad spectrum of related topics. A major drawback of textbooks is that it takes several years to publish and author of the textbook might not have conducted a thorough search of the literature.

On the other hand computer databases are convenient, easy to use, and referenced. These sources are similar to textbooks but are typically updated more frequently. This is all about the drug information resources.