Doctors, whether in primary care or as specialists prescribe drugs and medicines every day.  Other Health Professionals e.g. Nurse Practitioners, Paramedics, Radiographers can also undergo specialist training to be supplementary prescribers.

This unit will introduce you to the chemistry behind drugs and medicines and enable you to understand the effects of medicines and drugs on the functioning of the body.  How drugs function is an important part, not only in the design of new drugs, but in the diagnostic testing of bodily fluids for the presence of drugs.  To combat resistance to e.g. bacterial invasion or find new treatments for diseases, new drugs are constantly being developed, tested, trialled and released and sometimes things go wrong.  Isomerism in drug action is covered here and linked to the Thalidomide tragedy. Computers are widely used in the design process of new drugs.  The concept of computer-aided drug design and a compound library are covered in this unit.