MEDICA

TION
•A substance administered for the
diagnosis, cure, treatment, or
relief of a symptom of for
prevention of diseases
• Prescription
• Written direction for the preparation and
administration of drug
• Kinds of drug names
• Generic name
• Chemical name
• Trade/brand name
Kinds of drug names

• Generic name
• Given before a drug becomes officially an approved medications
• Generally used throughout the drug use
• Chemical name
• The name by which a chemist knows it
• Describe the constituents of the drug
• Brand name
• Trade name given by the manufacturer
• Pharmacology
• Study of the effect of drugs on living organisms
• Pharmacy
• Art of preparing, compounding and dispensing drug
• Pharmacist
• A person licensed to prepare and dispense drugs and
to make up prescriptions
Legal aspects of Drug administration

• Under the law, nurses are responsible for their

own actions regardless of whether there is a
written order
• A nurse who administers the written incorrect
dosage is responsible for the error as well as the
physician
Effects of Drugs

• Therapeutic effect
• Also called as the desired effect
• The primary effect intended, that is,
the reason the drug is prescibed
• Palliative
• Relieves symptoms but does
not affect the disease
• Curative
• Cures a disease or condition
• Supportive
• Supports body function until
other treatments or the
body’s response can take over
• Substitutive
• Replaces body fluids or
substances
• Chemotherapeutic
• Destroys malignant cells
• Restorative
• Returns the body to health
• Side effect
• Secondary effect, is one
that is unintended
• Usually predictable and
may be either harmless or
potentially harmful
• Adverse effect
• More severe side effects or
reactions, may justify the
discontinuation of the drug
• Drug toxicity
• Deleterious effects of a drug
• Results from overdosage, ingestion of a drug intended
for external use, and build up of the drug in the blood
because of impaired metabolism or excretion
• Drug allergy
• Immunologic reaction to a drug
• Can occur anytime from a few minutes to 2 weeks
after the administration of the drug
• Anaphylactic reaction
• Severe allergic reaction usually occurs immediately
after the administration of the drug
• Earliest signs are subjective feeling in the mouth and
tongue, acute shortness of breath, acute hypotension,
and tachycardia
• Drug tolerance
• Exists in a person who has unusually low physiologic
response to a drug and who requires increases in the
dosage to maintain a therapeutic effect
• Cumulative effect
• The increasing response to repeated doses of a drug
that occurs when the rate of administration exceeds
the rate of metabolism or excretion
• Idiosyncratic effect
• Unexpected effect and may be individual to a client
• May have a completely different effect from the
normal one or cause unpredictable and unexplainable
symptoms in a particular client
• Drug interaction
• Occurs when administration of one drug before, at the
same time as, or after another drug alters the eefcet
of one or both drugs
• Potentiating effect
• Increasing the effect
• additive
• Two of the same type ofs of drug increase the action of
each other
• Synergistic
• Two different drugs increase the action of one or another
drug
• Inhibiting effect
• Decreasing the effect
• Iatrogenic diseases
• Disease caused unintentionally by medical
therapy
• Examples
• Hepatic toxicity resulting in biliary obstruction
• renal damage
• malformations of the fetus
Drug Misuse

• Improper use of common medications in ways that lead to acute

and chronic toxicity, either continually or periodicallyty

• DRUG ABUSE
• Inappropriate intake of a substance
• 2 main facets
• Drug dependence
• Drug habituation
• Drug dependence
• a person’s reliance on or need to take a drug or
substance
• TWO TYPES
• Physiologic
• Due to biochemical changes in the body tissues
• Psychologic
• Emotional reliance on a drug to maintain a sense of well being,
accompanied by feelings of need or cravings for that durg
• Drug habituation
• Denotes a mild form of psychologic
dependence
• develops the habit of taking the substance and
feels better after taking it and continue even
though it may be injurious to health
FACTORS AFFECTING MEDICATION ACTION

• Developmental factors
• Gender
• Cultural, ethnic, and genetic factors
• Diet
• Environment
• Physiologic
• Illness and disease
• Time of administration
 ROUTES OF
ADMINISTRATION
Oral
> Most common, least expensive, and most convenient route
Sublingual
>Placed under the tongue, where it dissolves and directly absorbed
into the blood vessels
Buccal “cheek”
>Medication is held in the mouth against the mucous membranes of the cheek until the drug
dissolves
PARENTERAL
Subcutaneous
>Below the skin, subcutaneous
Intramuscular
>Into a muscle
Intradermal
>Under the epidermis
Intravenous
>Into a vein
• Less common routes are intra-
arterial, intracardiac,
intraosseous, intrathecal or
intraspinal, intrapleural, epidural
and intraarticular
TOPICAL
Dermatologic preparation- to the skin
Instillations and irrigations- into the body cavities or orifices, such
as urinary bladder, eyes, ears, nose, rectum, vagina
Inhalations – administered into the respiratory tract by a nebulizer
or positive pressure breathing apparatus
MEDICATION ORDERS

• TYPES OF MEDICATION ORDERS

• Stat order
• Indicates that the medication is to be given immediately and only once
• Single order
• One time order, is a medication to be given once at a specified time
• Standing order
• May be carried out indefinitely until an order is written to cancel it or it
may be carried out indefinitely
• PRN order
12 rights in administering medication
(to avoid medication errors)

1. RIGHT CLIENT 7. RIGHT MOTIVATION/ APPROACH

8. RIGHT OF THE CLIENT TO
2. RIGHT DRUG REFUSE
3. RIGHT DOSE 9. RIGHT OF THE CLIENT TO KNOW
4. RIGHT ROUTE THE REASONFOR THE DRUG
10.RIGHT EVALUATION
5. RIGHT TIME
11.RIGHT DOCUMENTATION
6. RIGHT 12.RIGHT DRUG PREPARATION
ASSESSMENT