Guaifenesin Nursing Considerations, Side Effects, and Mechanism of Action Pharmacology for Nurses
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Wife innocent or tradename robitussin i know you’ve heard of this i know you’ve probably taken robitussin before so let’s talk about what it is this is important to understand because so many patients are going to be taking this over-the-counter and we really need to understand what it does and what we need to be teaching our patients about it so go wife ineson it’s
Indication is for cough suppression and expectant what is expectant well when expectant really means getting all that junk all that crud up out of our lungs and getting rid of it so the action what it really does is it decreases viscosity of and mobilizes secretions so what does that mean really what that means it means it makes our mucus less sticky so that we
Can then move it we can get rid of it okay it makes it less clingy so we can we can clump it together get rid of it okay i know that sounds really disgusting but that’s really what it does so therapeutic class is allergy cold and cough remedy and expectorant some of the nursing considerations to keep in mind the first one i want you to keep in mind is the patient
Needs to maintain adequate fluid intake okay as we’re decreasing the viscosity of these secretions really need to increase our fluid intake to help even move it more and to get all of it out that’s the first thing you need to keep in mind that’s one thing you’re going to be tested on you’re going to see is we need to make sure our patients that are taking these
Medications are taking extra fluid okay we want to assess the lung sounds of our patient we want to see you know are we getting rid is are the lungs becoming more clear and is it actually working remember with every medication that we give there’s assessment right ad pi assess diagnose plan implement evaluate so the first thing with everything we do is we assess we
Gave the medication okay that was our plan that we implemented our plan now we need to evaluate we need to assess again we need to reassess see what’s going on did it work are the lungs becoming more clear remember keep the nursing process in mind that’s the first thing you always do the patient should avoid any over-the-counter cold medications if they’re taking
Robitussin if you’re giving them guaifenesin in the hospital they need to avoid all over-the-counter medications so that we know what they’re taking and what’s going on this can be really difficult with patients in general sometimes i have patients come in and they’ll bring their purse immense and they may not tell you about it okay so for example just different
From this a patient might have some xanax in their purse and you give them all these medications right everything’s going fine and then and then they’re popping xanax on their own to help them sleep at night right that can’t really happen in the hospital we need to know what’s going on because we can’t evaluate and do the treatments that we need to do if we don’t
Know exactly what’s happening with our patients at all times so you really understand what patient what medications the patient has what medications does the family have that they’re wanting to give the family member okay or the patient so really keep that in mind make them understand why you need to know what’s going on and the main reason is we can’t give them
The best treatment possible if we don’t know exactly what’s happening so that is wife innocent tradename robitussin and you will see this medication often in your career this has been another episode of the med master podcast by in our sng com to get our free cheat sheet cover the 50 most commonly prescribed medications head over to nrs ng comm slash 50 meds that’s
In our sng comm slash 50 meds thank you so much for joining me today and thank you for being part of the nrs ng family we’re here to help you succeed in nursing school and in life so start your journey today over at nrs ng comm slash 50 meds we’re glad to have you aboard you know what time it is now it’s time to go out and be your best self today happy nursing yell you
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Guaifenesin Nursing Considerations, Side Effects, and Mechanism of Action Pharmacology for Nurses By NURSINGcom