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Professor of Medicine School of Medicine University of Missouri — Kansas City Kansas City, Missouri
Research Assistant Professor University of Kansas Medical Center
| By Ira Wolinsky PhD and Louis Williams PhD. Published by the American
Pharmaceutical Association, Washington, DC, 2002. ISBN 1-58212-023-4.
Clothbound, xii + 426 pp. (26 x 18.5 cm), $59.
www.aphanet.org
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Published Online, August 15, 2003. www.theannals.com, DOI 10.1345/aph.1D005
Practitioners will find the emphasis on patient counseling to be the real strength of Nutrition in Pharmacy Practice. A complete chapter is devoted to the pharmacist's role in counseling; a sample case is provided that simulates a conversation between a pharmacist and a consumer seeking guidance on an herbal product for depression. Numerous counseling tips are provided that practitioners should find helpful in sharpening their skills to communicate effectively with consumers. A timely chapter, Energy Balance and Weight Control, is included, which provides a concise overview of the epidemiology of obesity and an evidence-based discussion of dietary and pharmacologic interventions for weight loss and maintenance that are entirely consistent with current consensus documents. The chapter Drug-Nutrient Interactions addresses topics of great importance to acute-care practitioners separately from issues geared primarily to community-based practitioners. Acute-care practitioners will find information centered on parenteral and enteral nutrition interactions, whereas community-based practitioners will find a discipline-focused discussion centered around cardiology, neurology, gastrointestinal, psychiatry, and infectious diseases interactions.
Several chapters provide information indispensable to establishing a sound foundation of basic nutrition, such as Essentials of Nutrition, Diet and Disease, Pediatric Nutrition, and Basics of Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition. Essentials of Nutrition is comprehensive and covers key topics related to macro- and micronutrients, adopting a life-cycle approach to describing the changing nutritional needs of individuals over time. Several tables containing definitions for commonly used nutritional terms and definitions for regulations for nutrient claims are also available. Basics of Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition (approximately 25% of the book) is comprehensive and extensively referenced (n = 266), providing readers with an accurate overview of nutritional screening and assessment techniques, nutritional requirements, indications for nutritional support, products, complications, and nutritional monitoring. In just under 100 pages, this chapter succeeds in providing an insightful overview of a complicated area usually reserved for an entire book. Diet and Disease provides a focused discussion on diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, anemia, osteoporosis, dental health, and renal disease. A valuable addition to this chapter is the list of targeted questions that pharmacists should raise when counseling patients with the disease states listed above.
Two chapters are devoted to topics of greater current interest to consumers and pharmacy practitioners: herbals and ergogenic aids. The chapter on herbals emphasizes herbs as dietary supplements; however, readers will find the discussion on the evolution of food and drug regulations helpful, especially the Office of Dietary Supplements and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Readers of the chapter on ergogenic aids will encounter a well-referenced (n = 238) discussion of more than a dozen substances commonly used as performance enhancers. Unfortunately, neither of these chapters adopted the focus on patient counseling that was used so successfully by other chapters.
This reasonably priced book has a place in the reference collection of busy pharmacy practitioners who take an active role counseling patients on nutrition-related matters. Because nutrition overlaps multiple specialty practices, this book may also interest dietitians, specialty practice nurses, or physicians who specialize in nutritional support. However, the focus is clearly centered on pharmacy practitioners, which makes this book unique. The visible emphasis on patient counseling will be appealing to community-based practitioners, primarily those who are involved in the care of patients receiving home enteral or parenteral nutrition. It is unlikely that this book would be adopted as a course textbook, but it should be available in the library of every school of pharmacy.
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