Pharmacotherapy safety permeates all topics and classes of this course. However, it is clear that it is not just a question of theory, undergraduate training, and curriculum. Instead, drug safety assurance must be an integral part of clinical practice and take place at the level of the individual drug, the individual patient, the patient population, the healthcare facility, and the overall healthcare management.

An example of drug safety assurance at the highest levels of the entire medication process is the arrangements for so-called 'high-risk medications'. We have offered a 23-minute video lecture on this topic in the 13th lesson, but for the sake of completeness, we present it here again.

Handouts for the video lecture can be found here:

Another general area where significant risks need to be perceived is the administration of drugs into tubes. Improper handling can result in overdose or underdose of the patient. We have also prepared a video lecture for this issue and it can be found in the chapter on perioperative drug management.

Thus, we are slowly getting to ensure the safety of pharmacotherapy for individual patients. This issue is discussed in general in the chapter Drug policy, reasonable prescribing and trained especially in the first week. It deals with the issues of effective and safe pharmacotherapy and therapeutic drug monitoring as one of its tools; it discusses the classification and importance of monitoring adverse effects; it refers to the chapter on Drug interactions and defines the position of the clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist as a key element in ensuring the safety of therapy.

A practical perspective on therapeutic drug monitoring and drug interaction management can be provided by the video lectures we encountered in weeks 5 and 6 of the semester. Let's recap them together, now with more emphasis on ensuring the safety of therapy.

Handouts for the video lectures can be found here:

Last but not least, safety is ensured by adequate dose adjustment in case of insufficiency of the elimination organs. Therefore, in week 4 and week 7, we offered the principles of dose adjustment in liver and renal insufficiency.

This is just a brief insight into the connections between all the material in the Applied and Clinical Pharmacology course and also an example of how to use and apply the knowledge and skills you have acquired in your future practice.