Dr. King’s goal in publishing King Guide was to provide practitioners with a comprehensive, timely, and authoritative reference on parenteral admixtures. He designed King Guide so that updated information could be added easily to the original compilation of information. Beginning with the first year of publication, quarterly supplements have been an integral and valued feature of “his Guide”. Quarterly supplements to King Guide are published to keep the contents up-to-date. Dr. King envisioned King Guide as the replacement for numerous compatibility charts that were in use in the 1960’s. He viewed those compilations as inadequate in supporting the needs of practitioners seeking current compatibility and stability information about parenterals.
The initial body of information that was published as King Guide in 1971 was summarized by Dr. King from references one through twenty-four. Most of those initial references were recompilations of even earlier reports, so ascertaining the original sources was difficult. Therefore any unreferenced remark or notation in any of the monographs is derived from one of these first twenty-four references. All other data entries are individually referenced. Soon after the initial publication of King Guide , a number of pharmacists and nurses requested a mechanism whereby they could share their observations on extemporaneous parenteral admixtures.