Risk Factors for Respiratory Depression – High-alert Medications (Nursing)

00:01 Now risk for respiratory depression. Yeah, this is no boy, no, right? Well, I'm gonna give you 3 categories of medications that have an increased risk for respiratory depression.

00:10 Now these drugs are moderate sedation agents, we give them IV, I've got a listed for you there.

00:15 So I'm gonna end in that like, PAM, you got midazolam, those that you know that they kinda relax the patient but they have an increased risk for respiratory depression.

00:26 Now these are moderate and minimal sedation agents in the middle category.

00:31 So we've listed names there for you to be familiar with and you'll notice that, wow, some of those are turning up in both categories.

00:38 The risk is still respiratory depression.

00:42 Lastly, opioids which sadly in America we're all familiar with whether you're a health care provider or not because the opioid problem and crisis is on the news all the time.

00:52 Well, either it's IV or oral, respiratory depression is the biggest risk factor.

00:58 So you can have liquid concentrates, you have immediate and sustained release.

01:02 Here's the problem with the sustained-release: used correctly, it's fantastic but if it's inadvertently crushed and then given to a patient by a health care provider, this could be a very dramatic situation.

01:16 It's one of the worst cases that I worked in my career with someone who took -- who was a great nurse but for some reason, took a sustained-release formula, crushed it up, and gave it to the patient as one dose, and that patient was overdosed on an opioid.

01:32 Thank goodness we have things like Narcan or naloxone to give the patient but you can see why for -- if you make a mistake why it's a high-risk medication to give a sustained-release as a crushed up dose.

01:45 Transdermal is also another one.

01:48 High risk, you wanna be careful that you remove the old patch before you put the new one on because otherwise you have a risk for overdosing your patient and increasing the risk of respiratory depression.

02:01 So let's look at these 3 together. What do they have in common? How can you remember these categories? What's gonna be the best way for you to chunk that information together?