# Medicine --- A **medicine** is a substance or compound that helps heal you. [[Pharmacology]] is the study of drugs and how they work in the body. [[Medication administration]] is the within the scope of practice for a [[nursing|nurse]], and very important to get right. ## Local & Systemic Drugs **Local drugs** are those that act directly at site they're administered. For example, a topical analgesic or I drops I think. **Systemic drugs** act on a site far from where they are administered, and get there by metabolizing through the body. Most drugs are systemic, unless stated otherwise these notes will generally assume a drug is systemic. ## Drug Names Drugs often go by several different names, but there are usually two that are commonly used, the *generic name* and the *brand name*. The **generic name** is the "official" or "technical" name for a drug and the **brand name** is the one designed and patented by the manufacturer. The brand name is capitalized and the generic name is not. For example, "Tylenol" is a brand name and "acetaminophen" is a generic name. The generic name is always the same for the particular chemical of a drug, and is used no matter what manufacturer is making the drug. It also has certain conventions that give you a hint as to what the drug is for. For example, drugs with generic names ending in “cillin” are all penicillins, like amoxicillin, etc. The brand name is specific to the manufacturer, which means that there can be many brand names to the same generic name. Most brand name drugs can be substituted with generic names unless specifically called out by the prescriber as "do not substitute." >[!health] Substitutions > Generic drugs are required to be *therapeutically equivalent* and are less expensive than trade-named drugs. ___