Book excerpt: Essential Prescribing provides medical students with an easy-to-follow overview of the drugs they are most likely to encounter at medical school and as they start their medical careers. The book benefits from the same landscape format and approach as Scion’s bestselling Essential Examination. Each class of drug is detailed using a common tabular format, based on the following sections: Examples Mode of Action Routes of Delivery Indications, Cautions and Contraindications Interactions Monitoring Side-effects Patient counselling This consistent approach helps the reader quickly find the pertinent information for the common drugs and situations they are likely to come across, so they can become confident of prescribing the correct drugs for the patient in appropriate doses. The book also features a questions and answer section at the end of the book for the reader to assess their knowledge. All medical students and foundation doctors now have to prove their prescribing competence by taking the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA). Essential Prescribing not only arms the reader with the key knowledge for the PSA, but also provides them with the core prescribing knowledge they will need as their medical careers progress.