E-drug: Canada's CPS
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I am a post-graduate Fellow in Vancouver, having trained and worked
in the UK and South Africa. I too was startled at the voluminous, but
superfluous and disorganized content of the CPS.
Inevitably, A book that is treated in Canada as the pharmaco-therapeutic
authority for clinicians and pharmacists bears comparison to the British
National Formulary (BNF) and the South African Medicines Formulary
(SAMF). Both of these books are written by academics and clinicians
in practice after review of the product literature, with the addition
of clinical experience and advice.
The BNF is distributed free to all registered clinicians and hospital staff,
and is used as the standard reference for all prescribing. Unlike the CPS,
the above formularies list brand names only in small print at the end of
the monographs. I have noted in Canada that in many circumstances,
clinicians know drugs only by their brand names, much to the delight
I expect, of the company that markets them. The Formularies also
provide clinical advice and algorithms, for example treatment of Diabetic
Ketoacidosis, Acute Asthma, and pain syndromes.
In a country with such an otherwise advanced medical infrastructure,
I was unable to find equivalent publications as the BNF and SAMF,
and must concur that the CPS, for all its bulk, seems wasteful.
Matt Seftel, MRCP
Post-graduate Fellow
Vancouver
"Matthew Seftel" <mattidan@sprint.ca>
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