Medication List

colleenmommyof4. . .do you have a drug handbook? most drugs have many known side effects ranging from soup to nuts. the drug handbooks will have a way of highlighting those particular side effects that are more significant than others and warrant looking out for. i happen to have mosby's nursing drug reference. this are what they indicate as the life-threatening side effects of clonidine: chf (congestive heart failure). the most common side effects are: drowsiness, sedation, headache, fatigue, orthostatic hypotension, palpitations, nausea, vomiting, malaise, dry mouth, and rash. now, knowing that these are the significant and most common side effects, i would list the nursing implications so they match up with these side effects. in other words, at the top of your nursing implications list i would put:

• assess for symptoms of chf (edema, dyspnea, wet rales, elevated b/p)
  
• assess for edema in feet and legs daily
  
• monitor i&o
  
• check for falling output
  
• assess b/p for hypertension and report significant changes
  
• assess pulse
  
• assess for allergic reaction: rash, fever, pruritis, urticaria and drug should be discontinue if antihistamines do not help
  
• assess for allergic reaction from patches: rash, urticarai, antioedema. if present the use of patches should be discontinued.

the remainder of your nursing implications can be listed below them.

the patient responses to the drugs would be the expected action of the drug on the person. with clonidine, the patient response would be to lower the blood pressure, hopefully to normal levels.

this drug has other uses than for hypertension. i will let you finish those up on your med card. if you do not have a drug handbook, you really should consider getting one.

keeley120. . .here is a website that is a medication card constructor. it will give you an idea of what information needs to go on a medication card. you might even want to use it to print out your medication cards. it is only a constructor (formats the printing). you have to put in all the information.

http://www.edruginfo.com/qthome.htm - e-druginfo.com's gateway page into medi-quik construct-a-card. you need to register, but it's free. you have to input all the information yourself. this constructor merely prints it onto a pre-formatted form. in playing around with the constructor i found that you could not go back otherwise you lost your input data. i was able to shrink the finished card down to about 7" x 5" but my printer didn't print any border, or perhaps i just didn't know how to apply a border or shrink the card down smaller.