Medication legally requiring a medical prescription before it can be dispensed
Photo of the packaging of four medicines registered in the UK, showing their Product Licence Numbers and symbols denoting if they are Prescription Only Medicine (POM) or Pharmacy Medicine (P)
A prescription drug (also prescription medication, prescription medicine or prescription-only medication) is a pharmaceutical drug that is permitted to be dispensed only to those with a medical prescription. In contrast, over-the-counter drugs can be obtained without a prescription. The reason for this difference in substance control is the potential scope of misuse, from drug abuse to practicing medicine without a license and without sufficient education. Different jurisdictions have different definitions of what constitutes a prescription drug.
In North America, ℞, usually printed as "Rx", is used as an abbreviation of the word "prescription". It is a contraction of the Latin word "recipe" (an imperative form of "recipere") meaning "take".[1] Prescription drugs are often dispensed together with a monograph (in Europe, a Patient Information Leaflet or PIL) that gives detailed information about the drug.
The use of prescription drugs has been increasing since the 1960s.
^"Rx". Merriam Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
A prescriptiondrug (also prescription medication, prescription medicine or prescription-only medication) is a pharmaceutical drug that is permitted to...
professional to a pharmacist, authorizing them to dispense a specific prescriptiondrug for a specific patient. Historically, it was a physician's instruction...
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million people were taking prescriptiondrugs for nonmedical use in 2010. Among 12th graders, nonmedical prescriptiondrug use is now second only to cannabis...
of prescriptions and patients' medical histories, aim to avoid the occurrence of dangerous drug interactions. Lists of contraindications for a drug are...
appropriate management. Drugs are classified in many ways. One of the key divisions is by level of control, which distinguishes prescriptiondrugs (those that a...
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country’s covered drug list. A study conducted by Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health concluded income level and prescriptiondrug use were associated...
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with a medical prescription. Many of the drug addicts in 1920s and 1930s Germany were First World War veterans who required addictive drugs for pain relief...
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app that track prescriptiondrug prices in the United States and provide drug coupons for discounts on medications. GoodRx checks drug prices at more...
requesting prescriptiondrug switches in certain cases, such as when the cost to the patient would be higher with the new prescriptiondrug; when the original...
to influence politicians. Marketing of prescriptiondrugs in the US is regulated by the federal PrescriptionDrug Marketing Act of 1987. The pharmaceutical...
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