Medications Commonly Used on a Cardiac Unit

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Hi everyone!

I've been super busy with school lately, and I've now entered my second semester. I've started Nursing 102, and one of the requirements is that we look up our patient's meds, and format cards for each medication. The card contains the generic and trade name, therapeutic class, pharmacologic class, key points for administration, and other patient specific things, like route, dose and time of administration.

I just started on a cardiac unit, and I was wondering if some more experienced nurses and students alike could tell me what the most common medications are on a cardiac floor. I wanted to get a jump on my cards, so my work load isn't so heavy when I do my initial patient look up. I figured if I could find out what the top 10 or 20 meds were, I could learn about them and make the cards ahead of time, I would better understand the basics about the drug when I actually came upon a patient who was prescribed it.

I really appreciate the help... a generic, or trade name for some meds would be great. Once I find those out, I can research the rest! :)

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Specializes in PCU, Critical Care, Observation.

Cardizem, Metoprolol, Clonidine, Atenolol = BP meds.

Also see cardiac pts on Coumadin and Digoxin quite often.

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Heparin, Integrillin, Plavix

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apresoline

amiodarone

hydralazine

most beta blockers (esp. lopressor, labelotol, coreg)

cardizem

nitro

ASA

digoxin

hctz

coumadin

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simvastatin. crestor . propanolol. tricor. lovenox. procardia. vasotec. stool softeners after CABG, as not to strain the heart, like MOM, colace, ducolax. dobutamine IV (adrenergic agonist) increases CO. dopamine IV (increase CO, treat low b/p).nitroglycerin iv (vasodilator).natrecor (for CHF)

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Specializes in Cardiac/Progressive Care.

Heparin, lovenox, arixtra for the injectable anticoagulants. Morphine. Lasix. All of the aforementioned meds.

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Specializes in Health insurance nursing/ Cardiac nursing.

in addition to the othe meds listed, multaq is another fairly common med.

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Hi everyone!

I've been super busy with school lately, and I've now entered my second semester. I've started Nursing 102, and one of the requirements is that we look up our patient's meds, and format cards for each medication. The card contains the generic and trade name, therapeutic class, pharmacologic class, key points for administration, and other patient specific things, like route, dose and time of administration.

I am very surprised that you are just now doing this in your second semester. We started seeing patients in our 3rd week of our first semester had had to know all of this for our patient starting on day one. We were quizzed and tested before each time.

Not trying to stir up any issues here but are you in a BSN or ADN program?

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Effient and Plavix. Looking up core measures for HF and AMI are a good way to identify importance, this will help you think critically. http://www.jointcommission.org/core_measure_set/

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Thank you SO much everyone! These are great.

I am very surprised that you are just now doing this in your second semester. We started seeing patients in our 3rd week of our first semester had had to know all of this for our patient starting on day one. We were quizzed and tested before each time.

Not trying to stir up any issues here but are you in a BSN or ADN program?

Justin, we've been seeing patients for just as long. I've been taking Pharmacology and learning about medications and what types do what things, but really just the basics and bare minimum. But now that I've entered my second semester, we're responsible for actually delivering the medications to our patients. Our instructors don't want us to go in and just give the meds, so before we actually do that, we have to "declare" them to our instructor, telling a little info about each med and why our patient is on it. We haven't learned cardiac meds yet, so I'm walking onto this rotation a little blind in the med aspect. I actually won't learn cardiac care for about another month. Kinda stupid if you ask me, because the hospital I work at is nationally renowned for cardiac care and we have TONS of heart patients. I think we should have gotten that information a LOOONG time ago! Our first semester on clinical we really couldn't do much aside from basic bedside care. I guess they wanted to make sure we had that down before we went any further. It was really annoying though, because we could do barely anything for 12 weeks of rotation. Pretty much vitals and accuchecks, dressing changes, foley insertion/removal, and we could hang a main IV fluid... and all these things had to be under observation by an instructor every single time (sans vitals and accuchecks), no matter how many times you did it.

I go to St. Joseph's College of nursing in Syracuse, NY. It's a 2 year weekday associates program for me, but they also offer BSN programs through Lemoyne college, also in Syracuse. I could have signed up for that now, but I wanted to start working right away and take some classes at night because our hospital gives full reimbursement if you start a bachelor's program.

I'm also now working as a nursing assistant... let me tell you, clinical was NOTHING compared to that. We only have one patient on clinical, and on that job I have 6. To be honest, I've gotten just as much experience from 3 weeks on the job as I have in 13 weeks of clinicals... maybe even more. I feel soooo much more prepared with all the extra practice I've been able to get.

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Specializes in Public Health, TB.

There are also multiple threads on Allnurses about this very subject.

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