Medical Surgical Medications

[bradycardic]

Hello nurses! I'm going to my medical surgical clinicals for school on Tuesday and would like to know what are the need to know medications for medical surgical hospitals ? Thanks

[CT Pixie, BSN, RN]

Med/surg gets such a mish-mosh of patients its hard to nail down one type.

I work post op surg floor but we do get medical overflow pts. The big 4 I I see are: pain meds, HTN/cardiac, psych meds and DM meds.

[wanderlustnurse88, RN]

I also see a lot of blood thinners. Enoxaparin, heparin, Coumadin, Pradaxa, Apixaban, xalero.

Pain meds - morphine, Percocet, Tylenol with codeine, codeine, fentanyl, dilaudid, extended release narcotics.

Blood pressure and heart med - tons in this drug class

Diabetes - different types of insulins, metformin

Psych meds - SSRIs, SNRIs, Ativan, risperidone, antidepressant

Also meds used as on off label use. For example, trazadone is an antidepressant but most of the time it is give qhs for sleep as that is one of the side effects. Another one is remeron which is also often used for sleep.

[umbdude, MSN, APRN]

I saw all of the above plus quite a bit of antibiotics and meds for COPD.

[NurseGirl525, ASN, RN]

Lots and lots. We had everything on the med/surg floor. Diabetes, cellulitis, post-op. Pretty much everything under the sun that is not icu, cardiac, or oncology. My hospital had a different floor for the more acute patients and one for icu.

[JustKeepSmiling, ADN, BSN, RN]

Know you insulins - onset, action, peak, duration. You'll see a ton of diabetics in medsurg.

Familiarize yourself with antibiotic/anti infective classifications and what microbes they are used for. Some are broad and used until cultures come back. Know which ones need monitoring for peak/trough and labs. Such as vanc is nephrotoxic, watch kidney function.

Lasix is K wasting, look at your labs. May need K replaced. Familiarize yourself with this stuff - will help you with careplans too.

A lot of patients are on anticoagulants for afib, DVT, etc. be aware of bleeding precautions and dietary restrictions (coumadin) and which labs need to be monitored. Watch your platelets on anticoags.

Ask yourself...

Why is my patient on this med?

Why this dose?

Will it interact with anything else they are on or may eat?

What am I worried about when giving this med?

Eventually you can gather medical and surgical history just by looking at the MAR!