Foreword from Dr. Terry Hébert

Pharmacology is a critical subject for people in the healthcare professions. That is perhaps the most obvious statement ever made. However, when students are in front of us as teachers, they often have little appreciation for how important this subject really is. They’re thinking maybe they just need to remember it, pass the exam, and then forget it all as they get to the good stuff about learning how people in their professions think and act – consigning that “sciency” stuff to a textbook they can look up later. This is far from the reality of the situation, as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic considerations are critical to the treatment of patients, evolve as patients get older and/or sicker and form the basis by which doctors and other healthcare professionals help assess new medicines and come to appreciate how they work and when they should be used and most importantly perhaps, at what dose.

Marcel Romanick and Andrew Holt have approached this problem in perhaps the best way I have seen in a long time. They focus on core concepts, add pearls of clinical wisdom where necessary and present it in a way that is different than the average textbook. Thus the book can be used by new learners to the domain, but its design as “An ABC of PK/PD” makes it approachable years after the student has learned (and perhaps forgotten) other text books. It jogs the memory – presents the material in short snippets that captures their essence. It is an approachable resource that can be used effectively by anyone who wants to remember or relearn the essentials of pharmacology. To my mind it is perhaps the most timely such resource I have ever seen!

When Andy asked me to write this foreword, I didn’t know what to expect upon looking at the book. After a few minutes of reading I thought this will be the easiest piece of writing I ever did. You open this book and you learn. That is a hard thing to get right with a subject this complicated. The authors do not dumb down the subject- they make it approachable. I teach these subjects too and I tell you, I will carry this book around with me wherever I go…

Terry Hébert

Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics