Oral liquid medicines for children: the issues of choice

Offering choices allows accommodation of patient preferences. For many drugs, the availability of different dosage forms is designed to meet individuals’ needs, some of whom, for example, may have difficulties swallowing tablets. Accordingly, having more than one concentration of the same drug in liquid form allows us to further tailor the volume to be administered. However, in practice, choices are sometimes ‘limited’, at least on an organisational level. Among other good reasons for restricting the product range, there simply is not enough space for a pharmacy to stock every single product that is marketed. For oral liquid medicines, the situation is such that one pharmacy may stock only a particular concentration while another pharmacy may keep one of a different concentration. In the UK, where patients may obtain their medicines from a range of pharmacies (in both hospital and community), this can result in patients being switched from one...
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: PostScript Source Type: research