Features of Adrenergic Receptors (Nursing)

00:01 In another part of this series, we discussed the 4 parts of blood pressure.

00:06 We discussed heart rate, contractility, fluid volume status, and vascular resistance.

00:12 We also discussed how to affect those with certain medications and interventions that we have.

00:18 But now we need to dive a little bit deeper into these medications so we understand what they're supposed to do and some complications that we can run into.

00:26 Before we talk about vasoactive and inotropic medications, we need to understand adrenergic receptors so let's go over that just for a little bit here.

00:35 So the first adrenergic receptor is beta I. Now this is found primarily in the heart, the kidney, and the fat cells but I want you to pay attention to what it does to the heart.

00:46 When we activate the beta I receptor, it's going to increase the force of contractility it also increase the rate of contraction. So when you activate beta I, you're increasing the contractility and the heart rate. Now, excess stimulation of this can cause arrhythmias so be on the lookout for that, okay. So, beta II receptor is typically found in smooth muscle like bronchial, vasculature, the gastrointestinal, the uterine, skeletal muscle, and some myocardium as well.

01:20 When you activate beta II, it leads to smooth muscle relaxation. For example, when we give albuterol, that's relaxing the bronchioles, we're activating beta II in the bronchioles or when we want to stop labor we activate the beta II in the uterus.

01:41 Our last adrenergic receptor is alpha I. This is found in our vascular smooth muscle. When we activate alpha I, we are trying to cause a vasculature to constrict. So remember that.

01:53 When alpha I is activated, we want vasoconstriction.