Walkthrough Q6: Pharmacological & Parenteral Therapies – NCLEX-PN®

00:01 A few clients ask the nurse if it's okay to take acetaminophen for mild pain.

00:06 Which client does the nurse caution against using the drug? All right. Let's break this down. Before I look at the answer choices, a few clients just asked the nurse about pain control.

00:17 Seems kind of weird to me but okay. That's how the NCLEX questions go. So, acetaminophen.

00:23 You might know that by the brand name of Tylenol. But acetaminophen is appropriate for mild pain.

00:29 I'm all right there. But which client does the nurse caution against using this drug? So, I'm going to look for which one of these four would be most at risk for taking acetaminophen.

00:41 Here's where I'd pause and say, "Hey, what do I know about the risk of acetaminophen? What happens in an overdose?" You might try and recall that information if you can.

00:50 All right. I know some of you don't like the structure and that's totally okay.

00:54 So, I want to give your brain the freedom to do that when you're taking a test as long as you use your scratch paper strategy or your write on wipe off board strategy, I think that's great.

01:05 So, let's just randomly pick one we're going to start with. I'm going to go with number three.

01:10 Okay. So, I know I'm looking for, I have four patients. One of these has the highest risk for taking this drug.

01:18 So, which patient has the highest risk of taking this drug, acetaminophen? A client with an allergy to aspirin.

01:28 Okay. Aspirin is an NSAID, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Now, is Tylenol or acetaminophen an NSAID? No. It's not. So, would a client with an allergy to aspirin be able to take acetaminophen? Likely, yes. But remember, if you have any question, always check with a healthcare provider.

01:51 But for now, I'm going to get rid of number three. Now, number four. A client with endometriosis.

01:58 Yeah. Okay. Remember what diagnosis is. You've got some really painful stuff going on in the uterus.

02:04 Is there any reason they would not be able to take Tylenol? No. None that I can come up with.

02:11 So, I get rid of number four. Now, I'm back up to number one and number two.

02:16 You could go which whatever one you want to do but just to keep our theme of being spontaneous, I'm going to go with number two. A client with liver disease.

02:25 What does liver disease have to do with acetaminophen? Well, if you say, "I'm not really sure. Let's leave that in, take a look at one, and see if that would be worse." A client with diabetes. Is there any connection between diabetes and someone taking acetaminophen? No. There really isn't but let's go back to number two. Why would that be a problem? Acetaminophen is processed by the liver and if you have liver disease, not able to metabolize that drug and chew it up and you're going to end up with an increased risk of acetaminophen toxicity.

03:06 So, of these four people, number two would be the one that we would be most cautious about, most concerned about taking an acetaminophen. Now, some of you out there are saying, "Excuse me. but I knew that before we looked at even the other answer choices." You may have and I'd say that's cool but always do the work because I've looked at questions and I know students that have looked at questions where they think they know the right answer but they don't work through the other answer choices and say why they're not the right answer? And they risk losing points and lowering their scores. So, the more work you do, the better result you're going to get.