Grab our free cheatsheet covering the 50 most commonly prescribed medications right here:
Alright i’m excited about our medication today because we are going to talk about albuterol i’m excited for a couple reasons number one you’re gonna see this medication given a lot during your nursing career this is given to so many patients in the hospital that is just it’s something you’re gonna see every single day it’s trade name is probe until alright so let
Me tell you the – well first of all let me tell you why it’s given well it’s a bronchodilator that it’s given to prevent airway obstruction in both asthma and copd all right now let me tell you the second reason why i’m incredibly excited about this medication because the way that it works is binds to our beta-2 adrenergic receptors in our airway in our trachea
And what that does is it leads to relaxation of the smooth muscles of the airway making it easier for our patient with asthma or copd to actually breathe okay so when we talk about this we’re talking about our fight-or-flight symptoms right our fight a fight or flight system and what this does it actually works to help with that that fighting response okay that
Fight-or-flight response what it does is it it opens up our airway makes it easier for us to breathe so we can get we can get the heck out of there we could start fighting you know it makes us ready for the fight okay so that’s how you need to think about it so on in contrast the other thing that we can talk about here is we can talk about our beta blockers so your
Beta blockers are doing the exact opposite they’re gonna try to constrict that airway this really has the exact opposite effect on our long our trachea in our lungs we have beta receptors we have beta-2 adrenergic receptors okay within our heart we have beta 1 receptors okay so the easy way to think about that is we have one heart beta 1 receptors in the heart
We have two lungs beta 2 receptors in the lungs so the way how beautiful works it actually goes to those beta-2 adrenergic receptor sites and it stimulates them okay it it’s an agonist okay agonizes them and it gets them working and and being effective and so by doing that it causes them to dilate okay it’s gonna cause our airway to relax and make it easier for
These patients to breathe so therapeutic classes bronchodilator it’s pharmacologic classes adrenergic agonist okay so i wanna make sure that’s really straight right there so albuterol is gonna really do the exact opposite of a beta blocker okay ed you’re metoprolol or something like that i think a lot of people can get confused this because albuterol ends in o
L remember our beta-blockers are gonna get end in o l o l metoprolol for example don’t get confused that realize that this does the exact opposite of that and so with that in mind one thing i want you to realize is that albuterol can actually decrease the effectiveness of your metoprolol of your beta-blocker okay so you have a patient who’s all of a sudden their
Heart rate jumps to 150 you know and they have a well let’s say they have a prn dose of metoprolol for heart rate greater than 120 you run to the cabinet you get that metoprolol the five milligrams whatever you push it iv and their heart rate starts to come down but hey here comes the respiratory therapists are ready to give their a butyl treatment their breathing
Treatment well best thing you could do is tell that that rt that you know we’re actually dealing with kind of a cardiac issue we just gave a beta blocker i don’t want to counteract what i just did to try to bring that heart rate down that svt or whatever was going on and so let’s kind of hold off on the albuterol their breathing really good now let me call you in
Just a little bit once that albuterol or once that metoprolol said time to take effect okay does that make sense so metoprolol goes in and it blocks that okay where are albuterol goes in there and it tries to get that going okay so a couple things to keep in mind like i said it can decrease the effectiveness of our beta blockers it can so another thing to patients
Who use inhalers too much an inhaler that can actually lead to bronchospasm which would be just the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do with our with our albuterol okay so our beta our beta-2 adrenergic receptor agonist okay so we really don’t want our patients overusing their inhaler because that can lead to a bronchospasm and then cut off their ability to
Breathe make sure you teach your patients that make sure you teach your patients to monitor for any chest pain or palpitations remember we’re getting were stimulating those receptors okay so this we could develop palpitations mostly this how butyrate of two receptors which are in your lungs but it could have some effect on your beta one within your heart leading
To these palpitations okay so want to monitor our chest pain monitor our palpitations a couple things to keep in mind is we want to use caution with heart disease diabetes got clomid seizure disorder but the biggest things i want you to keep in mind are why are we giving this okay cuz that’s what you’re gonna need to know you’re gonna need to know you’re giving
This for asthma copd we’re trying to open up those airways allow them to breathe better and we want to use caution with our beta blockers okay exact opposite effect and that’s really what you need to know about oh this has been another episode of the med master podcast brought to you by med master course comm and in rs ng calm my name is john haws are in cc are
In student nurse mentor and your biggest fan if you’re ready to demolish nursing pharmacology once and for all head over to med master course calm and use the coupon code podcast to save 15% on lifetime membership to med master course and then master course is packed full of 30-plus hours of hd video and audio content with tons and tons of free cheat sheets and
Downloads demolished nursing pharmacology never guess a meddigan go to med master course comm coupon code podcast you guys know what time it is now go out and do something great happy nursing you
Transcribed from video
Albuterol Nursing Considerations, Side Effects and Mechanism of Action Pharmacology for Nurses By NURSINGcom
