Having taught doctoral level pharmacology classes and continuing education courses over the years, I can attest that there is a huge weight upon the shoulders of practitioners who prescribe medications. I've required my students to learn and weigh the main/side/interaction/withdrawal effects of every medication they will be prescribing and to consider that if only symptoms are the indicators for prescribing and not underlying causes that their prescriptions can not only complicate the healing process but also bring on new but preventable pathologies. For many of the medications given out so freely today without practically no monitoring of patient status has created in and of itself a public health threat in the United States. So, the first consideration of any prescribing action is to follow the dictum of Hippocrates, "First, do no harm".