The advantages and disadvantages of various drug information sources have been outlined. Possible information sources will vary according to country and your own personal situation. Your job is now to decide how best to keep up-to-date, by making a list of all the possible resources to which you have access. Try to find at least one each of the following: (1) medical journals; (2) drug bulletins; (3) pharmacology or clinical reference books; (4) therapeutic committees or consultants or a postgraduate training course.

Although your primary source of prescribing information in your daily clinical work should be your personal formulary, you will sometimes face a difficult problem, which calls for an additional source of information. This could be a pharmacology or clinical reference book, a drug bulletin, consultants (pharmacist, specialist, colleagues), a drug compendium or a formulary.

The limitations of commercial information have been clearly described. If you decide, nevertheless, that it has a role to play, follow the ground rules already outlined. But do not use commercial information in isolation from other more objective sources.