I'm a doctor. I own the PDR. I haven't opened it in three years.

The PDR is merely a bound copy of all the package inserts for all currently available prescription medications. That's it. If you were prescribed a medicine, you already have the same information about it that you will find in the PDR.

Most of this information isn't useful. It will have a long long list of different side effects, but won't necessarily tell you which is most common, how to avoid it, or which could be dangerous.

The organization is awful. Medications are listed in groups by the name of their manufacturer. Huh? What's wrong with alphabetical by generic name? I hate having to use the index every time I want to find a drug.

A much better source of highly technical information is the book Drug Facts and Comparisons. It offers independent reviews of entire classes of medications (eg, all anti-inflammatory medicines together). It gives detailed information about the drug, the side effects (include how common they are), and how well each drug works compared to others in the same class. It's a great reference.

For everyday healthcare use, books like the new large-size Pocket Pharmacopeia are more useful.

The PDR has one useful feature: photographs of all the pills. In theory, you could use this to identify a pill if you didn't have the bottle and the patient couldn't tell you. In practice, there are better pill-identification systems for sale, and if you need to know, just call your local Poison Control center.

Most doctors get their PDR for free. They keep it because it looks nice on the shelf. Few of them would pay for it.




Recommended: No