Med Info

[tiffanyleigh0212]

I'm working on my clinical paperwork and we are having to fill out a new type of med info sheet. One of the questions on the sheet is "Actions to take if the assessment shows the drug is ineffective." I've looked all in my drug book and tried google and haven't been able to find anything. The drug is Lasix. My guess would be to increase the dose or stop the medication and try a new one. But those are things only the doctor can do, which might would be okay to say for this paperwork purpose, but I wanted to see if anyone else had anymore ideas for actions the nurse could do, or anything like that. The patient is taking 20mg Lasix 1x daily for hypertension and edema. Thanks for any help.

[aerorunner80, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN]

It sounds like your instructors are trying to get you to use your nursing judgement.

You could approach this several different ways.

Sometimes you will get orders to titrate drug to achieve (x) number or desired result. Sometimes you will get a dosage range.

Think through it that way.

Look up in your drug guide the general recomended dose range for and adult (assuming you are in your adult rotation or peds if you are in your peds rotation) and go from there.

Use that nursing judgement!!!!!