Basic & Applied Pharmacokinetics Self Assessment

Mastery of pharmacokinetics is more important than ever. 

To exercise the best possible judgment in patient care, medication plans should be selected for the maximum efficacy and safety for each individual patient. 

Be confident in your approach with ASHP’s Basic & Applied Pharmacokinetics Self Assessment, a new resource from John E. Murphy, author of ASHP’s Clinical Pharmacokinetics, Fifth Edition, which offers questions and exercises with answers and detailed solutions to help gauge your understanding. 

Whether you are a student, a new pharmacist, or a long-time practitioner, it is essential that you not only acquire and maintain your therapeutic knowledge, but also stay on top of new developments in pharmacokinetics. 

This is a valuable review book designed to test skills for using equations and the application of pharmacokinetic parameters. It is the perfect book to review content you have learned and practiced, in addition to learning new areas not previously covered in your training.

As an added feature, the YouTube channel, here, is available as a complementary companion to the book, which includes a library of videos created by John Murphy to help you through the major pain points and help further support your self assessment.

John E. Murphy, PharmD, FASHP, FCCP

John E. Murphy is Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Science and Associate Dean for Academic and Professional Affairs at the College of Pharmacy, and Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the College of Medicine, the University of Arizona in Tucson. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Otago School of Pharmacy in Dunedin, New Zealand. He received his BS in Pharmacy and PharmD degrees from the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he was a recipient of the Distinguished Pharmacy Alumnus Award in 1998. 

Long active in pharmacy organizations, Dr. Murphy was president of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) from 2008-2009, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) from 1997-1998, and the Georgia Society of Hospital Pharmacists.

Dr. Murphy has published over 200 papers, ~ 100 abstracts, six editions of Clinical Pharmacokinetics, and the Resident Survival Guide. He is co-editor of the Pharmacotherapy Self-Assessment Program (PSAP 8) for ACCP with Mary Lee and is currently writing a new basic and applied pharmacokinetic self-assessment textbook for ASHP. He is a frequent speaker at international, national, and statewide continuing education meetings. 

Among various professional and teaching awards received over the years, Dr. Murphy received the Award for Sustained Contributions to the Literature of Pharmacy Practice from the ASHP Research and Education Foundation in 2003 and the Education Award from ACCP in 2012.

An interview with the author can be found here.

The Pharmaceutical Journal, 1 November 2014, Vol 293, No 7834 

[REVIEWER'S EXPERT OPINION] 

Laurence A. Goldberg

This book has been written to test practitioners’ skills in using pharmacokinetic equations and the application of pharmacokinetic concepts. It is not meant to be the final word on how patients should be dosed or monitored. The chapters are designed to pose questions and include calculations, with the answers given at the end of the chapter. Readers who get incorrect answers can refer to the detailed solutions to the problems that are provided in the second part of the book. Although some of the problems are based on actual patients treated over the years, some are purely hypothetical and the approaches taken may not be common or routine but are provided as examples to illustrate points. At the beginning of most of the self-assessment chapters, population pharmacokinetic values and dosing approaches are described. This is not meant to suggest that better approaches or different parameters might not be found in the literature.

The book opens with a section describing pharmacokinetic symbols and pharmacokinetic terminology followed by a range of basic pharmacokinetic equations. The chapter on general pharmacokinetic applications offers some basic calculations on determining the half-life of a drug, the elimination rate constant, the dosage interval, the volume of distribution, the clearance, estimating steady state concentrations, determining loading and maintenance doses, and considerations for dosage adjustment. Later chapters provide problems on medication dosing in overweight and obese patients, estimating creatinine clearance and drug dosing in renal insufficiency.

The remaining chapters are drug specific, covering the range of drugs that often require pharmacokinetic interventions and dose adjustments: aminoglycosides, carbamazepine, digoxin, heparins, lithium, phenobarbital, phenytoin/fosphenytion, valproic acid, vancomycin and warfarin. As an added feature, the YouTube channel ‘Basic & applied pharmacokinetics self-assessment videos’ is available as a complementary companion to the book. It includes a library of videos created by the author to help readers through the major pain threshold of getting to grips with pharmacokinetics and provides further support to the self-assessment process.

This is a useful book designed to test the skills of practitioners in the use of pharmacokinetic equations and the application of pharmacokinetic concepts. It offers good revision of what has been learnt and what is being practiced. It removes the fear of what appear, at first sight, to be complex equations.