Introduction to Pharmacology for Nursing Students (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, welcome to the introductory video to pharmacology.

00:04 Now I don't know what you've heard about pharmacology, but I want you to be assured that you are going to have fun learning this content.

00:11 In this video, we're going to talk about the nurse's role in safe and effective administration of drugs.

00:17 So let's start at the beginning.

00:18 What do you think pharmacology is? Okay, good job answering the question.

00:25 Now let's take a look at the formal definition of pharmacology.

00:28 It's the science dealing with the preparation, uses, and especially the effects of drugs.

00:33 Okay, so probably pretty close, and hopefully you got that answer.

00:37 Now let's look at what a drug is.

00:38 Now it can be any chemical substance.

00:41 A lot of times people think drugs are just things that have to have prescriptions and must come from a health care provider, but they're really not.

00:47 A drug can encompass anything, any substance that we use in treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of a disease.

00:55 Anything that helps our patient to have enhanced their physical or their mental well being.

01:00 So it's not just limited to things that healthcare providers prescribe.

01:04 They can also be anything from a health food store, a chemical, a vitamin, a supplement.

01:11 So remember, when you're taking care of clients, you want to make sure that you ask about all the substances that they take.

01:18 We need complete information in order to keep them safe.

01:21 So what do you think the ideal drug is? Well, there's three things that we look for.

01:27 We'd like the drug to be safe, we like it to be selective, and we want it to be effective.

01:33 Okay, so when we say safe, nobody wants to take a drug that gives them more problems than benefits.

01:40 We want it to be selective, like with antibiotics, we want them to kill the bugs in the bacteria, but we don't want them to kill the human cells.

01:48 And we want it to be effective.

01:50 If we take a drug to treat someone's high blood pressure, we want it to lower their blood pressure.

01:55 So when you're just dipping your toes into the pool of pharmacology, what you want to think about is, is this drug safe? Is it going to be selective? And is it going to be effective for my patient.

02:06 Now, if you gave me a wish list of lots of other things that we could have for the drugs, these are great things to have.

02:13 First of all, is reversibility.

02:16 And I'm sure you've heard a lot about the opiate crisis.

02:18 We have a drug called Narcan or Naloxone, that if someone has an opioid overdose, If you give Narcan, it will bump those opioids off the receptors and bring that patient essentially back to life.

02:30 So the ability for the drug to be reversible is really important when it comes to safety.

02:35 Not all drugs are.

02:37 Now predictable.

02:38 I want to know when I give this drug to patient A, or to patient B, I'm going to have relatively the same effect.

02:46 The next one is no adverse effects.

02:49 Well, that would be wonderful but that really doesn't exist.

02:53 All drugs have some negative effects.

02:56 And so you want to minimize those, but we're never going to get to reach the 'no adverse effects level', No interactions.

03:03 When you take two medications, you have the potential to have interaction.

03:09 And when drugs start working together, they can either impact and significantly increase the action of the drug, or they could diminish the action of the drug.

03:18 And finally, we want it to be cheap and simple.

03:21 Now, if you think this drug exists, that's all three of those things: safe, selective and predictable, plus reversible, no adverse effects, no interaction, and cheap and simple.

03:32 It simply doesn't exist.

03:35 We try for those things.

03:37 It's a wish list, and we get as close as we can.

03:39 But many drugs can't meet all of these criteria.

03:43 So overall, what is our goal with pharmacology? We've already talked about all the things that we wish a drug could do, and that there is no true ideal drug.

03:52 So what is our target? Well, we're looking for maximum benefit for the patient with minimum harm to the patient.

04:01 And really, that's the exciting part about pharmacology.

04:04 It's not just memorizing drugs, and names and side effects and adverse effects.

04:10 That would be completely boring.

04:12 What we're looking for is how do I help my patient get the most from this drug, and the minimum harm, and that's where nurses play a pivotal role.

04:22 So here's another question for you.

04:24 What determines the strength of a drug response? Okay, now that you've selected your answer, let's look at some of our ideas.

04:32 Okay, so let's look at the factors of how much of the drug we can get to the site and what are the things that impact it.

04:38 First of all, the dosage of the medication and when we say that we mean the amount of the medication, so if I give a larger dose, more drug will make it to the site where we want it to work.

04:48 If I give a smaller dose, less will make it.

04:51 Next thing, about the route of medication.

04:54 I give a much smaller dose if I give them medication IV, intravenous or straight into the vein.

05:00 If I give them medication orally, it goes through a first pass effect in the GI tract, which we'll talk about more in another video.

05:07 But just know that for now the route I give the medication matters.

05:11 More of the drug will reach a site if I give it in a route like IV, or sublingual, versus if I give a medication that's swallowed and goes down into the stomach.

05:21 The timing between doses matters.

05:23 If I want less drug to get to the site, I just increased the amount of time in between doses.

05:30 So if I have a patient that's showing us signs of toxicity, that they've got too much of the drug on board, instead of giving it every four hours, I'll give it every 6 hours or maybe even every 8 hours.

05:40 So changing the timing in between doses will affect how much of the drug gets to the site.

05:45 Now, then every patient is different.

05:47 I would love to tell you that everything was predictable.

05:50 If we gave this drug to patient A and this drug to patient B, they would act exactly the same.

05:56 Never happens that way in my practice.

05:59 So listen to your patients.

06:01 when they tell you when they take this medication, they have this weird side effect, believe them because everyone's body is different.

06:09 Now diphenhydramine is a common medication like Benadryl.

06:12 Most people when they take it get really sleepy.

06:16 Some people when they take it get really wired up, particularly with children.

06:20 So just keep in mind, we know what the medication usually does.

06:24 But always listen to your patients when they tell you what they experienced taking that medication.

06:29 Now pharmacokinetics starts to sound super fancy, but it's really just how the drug moves through the body.

06:36 You'll see the words there on the slide ADME.

06:38 That just stands for absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion.

06:44 We'll talk more about those later in another video.

06:47 But how each one of those processes ADME is affected, manages how much of the drug gets the actual site of action.

06:56 The last one is pharmacodynamics.

06:58 And that's the effects of the drug on the body.

07:01 So these are two very important pharmacology terms.

07:04 Pharmacokinetics that talks about movement and that's just movement of the drug through the body.

07:09 Pharmacodynamics is the effects of the drug on the body.

07:13 So those are two really important pharmacology type concepts that we'll explore more in other videos.