Course Description: This course focuses on pharmacologic agents, principles and the role of the nurse in initiating, delivering, documenting, and evaluating medication therapy. Legal and ethical responsibilities associated with the use of pharmacologic agents are examined. Additionally, quality and safety issues in contemporary health care are integrated throughout the course.
Course Objectives:
- Identify pharmacological principles of medication administration in nursing practice.
- Discuss the concepts and principles related to pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacotherapeutics.
- Describe the relationship between lifespan considerations and the effects of drugs.
- Identify the various cultural factors that may affect an individual’s acceptance and response to medications.
- Connect the legal, ethical and interdisciplinary implications for the nurse in the administration of drug therapy.
- Utilize clinical reasoning and decision-making in the safe implementation of drug therapy.
- Compare the major drug classifications in terms of their mechanism of action, therapeutic uses, adverse effects, and nursing implications.
Medication Reconciliation Reflection:
In our medication reconciliation project, we had to find a patient and go over their medications. This included finding out which medications they used, how they used them, where they got the medications from, where they stored them, and what they knew about the medication. Apart from the assignment, we also read the National patient Safety Goals from the Joint Commission. In this article, they mention goals to improve patient safety when taking medications. One of the goals focused on the labeling and storage of the medications. It said that the labeling of medications and medication containers is a risk-reduction activity that is consistent with safe medication management (National Patient Safety Goals, 2020). This relates to our project where we had to find out how the patient stored their medications. This is important because if the medications were not stored in their original container then patients could mix up their medications by accident. That Is why proper teaching regarding medication storage is important, especially when patients are taking multiple medications. Other big points from the assignment that play a big role in patient safety is how the patients take their medication, what they use them for, and where they got the medications from. If patients know how to properly take their medication, what they are used for, and where they can access them, they will be safer in taking and acquiring the medications they need.
Reference:
National Patient Safety Goals Effective July 2020 for the Hospital Program. (2020). Retrieved November 07, 2020.
