Please Help: Daily Nursing Care Plan/Medicaton Card Question

LydiaGreen · Sep 17, 2004

What goes on a drug card? Whoa baby, lots! They should call them drug dictionaries, not drug cards. After I had made about my thousandth, my husband got me a pda and we were allowed to use those instead and was I happy! It's a lot easier to carry a pda then to carry a huge stack of drug cards. Even if you put them in one of those rings, they are impossible to keep clean and you still have to flip through to find what you want when you want it.

Good luck - and you can expect to have all of your classmates coming to you for advice on their clients' meds - I know my class always went to the one who was a pharmacy tech before going to nursing school!

Anyway - for our clinicals, we had to have

Generic Name

Brand Name (the two most popular - like for ibuprofen you'd have Advil & Motrin)

Class

Action

Uses

Dosages and Routes

Side Effects

Adverse Reactions

Contraindications

Interactions

Nursing Considerations (assessments you need to do before giving the drug - like taking a heart rate and BP before giving metoprolol)

Evaluation (for therapeutic response, adverse reactions, etc but they want those clearly stated - like decreased in BP WNR, or monitor Hgb, RBC counts if the drug has hemolytic properties)

Teaching (they want to know what YOU need to tell the patient about this medication so that they will be able to continue taking it safely when they go home or can watch for and report S&S to you or their doctor that may indicate a reaction to the medication)

Treatment of Overdose - always good to know - a person can even overdose on oxygen, believe it or not (had no idea when I started)

One more tip - if you do not have the drug card, or drug information at hand (your clinical instructor may ask you one or two questions about each med), you will NOT be allowed to give the drug. Some clinical instructors tell you that you need to memorize each and every drug card - no, you don't. It's just a way to freak you out. Memorize the drug categories (or classification) like proton pump inhibitors, SSRIs, beta blockers, loop diuretics, etc. Memorize that and you will be set - then all you need to know about a drug is it's classification and the rest will come to you. No nurse can memorize every drug, so don't sweat it. Get through clinicals and when you start your preceptorship or as a new grad, you will discover just how many nurses have to look something up because they haven't heard of a drug, have never given the drug before or in a very long time, or have never given the drug via a particular route. That's why there should always be a CPS in the med room or on the med cart.

One more tip - no clinical instructor will accept, "I couldn't find any information on it," as an excuse. If it isn't in the CPS (yes, this happens), your drug guide, etc... go to the internet and do a search. The website you use MUST be reputable (ie., the manufacturer's website with the drug information that you would normally find in a CPS, or a government health website - in Ontario I use Health Canada and Healthy Ontario but you could use the FDA or something similar in the States, I'm sure).

So, I hope this helped you. Don't sweat clinicals. It's horrible some days, absolutely wonderful on other days, and in between for most of them. Oh, and you will have to give report to someone (or tape it) at the end of your clinical day. Bring a little notebook and make yourself a little box chart with the 7 body systems on one side and a space for you to right anything not WNL on the other side. Start at the head and work your way down - so start with CNS, then CV, and so on. In CNS you would make a little blurb like A&O to PPT (alert and oriented to person, place and time). In CV, you would make a little blurb like BP elevated at 1400 hours 170/104. This is the information that the nurse you report to will want. And ALWAYS report anything outside of normal limits to your clinical instructor and the client's assigned nurse (clients will still have an assigned nurse who will likely be checking up on you because they are also responsible for the client even if you are the one providing the care).

2rntish · Sep 17, 2004

remember kiss, keep it simple...don't rewrite the pdr on a drug card. most drug books have the critical, life threating ses, containdications...in bold.

i also think it helps to write the information (helped me) toimplant the information in your mind.

what do the students ahead of you say. they have been through this.

what do you need to safely administer meds and answer the patients questions??

most instructors want to see what you feel is critical for that med. things change from pt to pt. how do you use the info on your card to critically think about your pt.

they would let you use the book if they wanted everything listed...

sad · Sep 18, 2004

I thank you for the very informative post.