drug card help

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hi all.. i have a question about pharmacology.. we have a project to make a drug card on metformin but i have trouble understanding what we need to do. i do not understand what does it mean by the classification and the interaction of the drug. is classification just what this drug does?? because when i looked for metformin, says antidiabetic; oral antihyperglycemic agent which improves glucose tolerance in non-insulin dependent pts.

all help will be greatly appreciated.. thanks soo much in advance

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Specializes in General adult inpatient psychiatry.

Classification would be anti-diabetic, like you said and I think interaction would where does it act in the body/what does it do. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

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than does that mean that for classification for metformin is only antidiabetic? how about it being a biguanide derivative producing an antihyperglycaemic effect in man only when there is insulin secretion. does this count?

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

Hi, eleos, and welcome to allnurses! :welcome:

The classification of a drug is how it has been placed in an organizational class or group of drugs. Drugs are often classified into chemical and functional (action or use) classes by the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them. Your government may also place drugs in some sort of classification system as our American government does.

The action of a drug is it's pharmacologic properties. Interaction of a drug has to do with how each drug behaves when it is mixed or given along with one or more drugs or other compounds such as certain foods or herbs.

In the case of metformin my drug reference classifies it as this:

Chemical class: biguanide

Functional (action/use) class: Oral antidiabetic

For interactions it lists the following (page 650, 2007 Mosby's Nursing Drug Reference)

"
INTERACTIONS

Do not give with radiologic contrast media; may cause renal failure.

Increase
: [in] metformin level--cimetidine, digoxin, morphine, procainamide, quinidine, ranitidine, triamtereme, vancomycin

Increase
: [to] hypoglycemia--cimetidine, calcium channel blockers, corticosteroids, estrogens, oral contraceptives, phenothiazines, sympathomimetics, diuretics, phenytoin

With Drug/Herb

Hyperglycemia: [with] glucosamine

Hypoglycemia: [with] chromium, coenzyme Q-10, fenugreek

Increase:
[in] metformin level--quinine

Increase:
[of] antidiabetic effect--alfalfa, aloe, basil, bay, bilberry, bitter melon, black catechu, buchu, burdock, coriander, dandelion, eyebright (orally), fenugreek, garlic, ginseng, glucomannan, glucosamine, goat's rue, gymnema, horehound, horse chestmut, jambul, myrrh, myrtle

Decrease
: [in] antidiabetic effect--bee pollen, blue cohash, broom, chromium, elecampane, eucalyptus, gotu kola."

Now, I've lived with Chinese people a long time. Some of those herbs are used pretty regularly by the Chinese so you might want to pay attention to the interactions between some of them and metformin and note them on your drug card for this particular medication.

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WIll someone please post an example of a pharm card? I keep hearing about them, but haven't seen what one looks like..... very interested because Ill be starting them this week.......... 2nd semester starts tomorrow!

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Daytonite could not have explain it better. Summerheaven if you have a drug book it really is the the drug card just in your own words. I hope this helps because it was difficult for me at one point and really all the instructor are looking for is the fact of you knowing what the drug do per you studying it from the drug book.

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Specializes in med-surg.

Thanks Daytonite for the example of the critical thinking flow sheet. I think this is the perfect organizational means of studying I've been looking for. Goodbye gazillion 4 x 6 note cards!!!! Just wished I'd found it 3 semesters ago!!!!!

Surviving with a B, hoping for the NCLEX in June!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Tele, IM, OB/GYN, neuro, GI.
WIll someone please post an example of a pharm card? I keep hearing about them, but haven't seen what one looks like..... very interested because Ill be starting them this week.......... 2nd semester starts tomorrow!

They're usually a 4X6 card that has a spot for the drug name, classification, interactions, nursing implications, side effects, and precautions. Before you purchase/make any check with your instructor on what format they want.

Our school had us purchase them then the instructors didn't want them in card form because it was to much to keep track of when they graded them. If you turned them in on the cards you got no points. Most of us stoppped turning them in because this was summer vacation homewrok an with over 400 drugs written on these cards and having to rewrite them wasn't happening.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
WIll someone please post an example of a pharm card? I keep hearing about them, but haven't seen what one looks like..... very interested because Ill be starting them this week.......... 2nd semester starts tomorrow!

I am sorry to say that the one website that formatted and printed drug cards for nursing students was taken offline by the publisher, so there are no examples to show you.

When I was in nursing school 34 years ago we had to make drug cards for each of the drugs we ever gave to a patient while we were students. The only instructions we were given were to use 4 inch by 6 inch index cards and to include the same basic information that is in a nursing drug handbook: generic name of the drug, brand names of the drug, functional classification, chemical classification, uses, action, normal dose and routes of administration, side effects, interactions, any special considerations and nursing considerations specific to this drug. We could set the card up (format it) any way we wanted. I used a different colored card for narcotics just to distinguish them from all the other cards. I used to keep the paper backings of the wrappers that the medications came in, if possible and paste them to the top right hand corner of my drug cards so I could recognize what the packaging looked like as well. By the time I graduated I think my stack of cards was about 3 inches high.

Today, you can buy these cards already printed for you. You can find them online at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. The problem is that you are always going to have patients getting drugs that won't be included in these pre-printed stacks of cards!

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
thanks daytonite for the example of the critical thinking flow sheet. i think this is the perfect organizational means of studying i've been looking for. goodbye gazillion 4 x 6 note cards!!!! just wished i'd found it 3 semesters ago!!!!!

surviving with a b, hoping for the nclex in june!

you are very welcome. to go along with it, use the weblinks on this thread to help you find all that information when filling out those sheets for any particular disease!

with these tools you are in a position to do more than just survive a b, i think.

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