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Hydrocodone acetaminophen has a trade name of norco this is a medication very commonly given to post-op patients into patients who are in the hospital are experiencing pain therapeutic class is opioid analgesic allergy cold and cough remedy and antitussive pharmacologic classes opioid agonist and non-opioid analgesic combination what is really helpful with these
Types of medications we can combine the hydrocodone with acetaminophen so we can thereby decrease the amount of the hydrocodone that we’re giving and using the acetaminophen is kind of an adjunct to help with the pain while giving a lower dose of the hydrocodone so the reason we give it as management to moderate to severe pain and what it does is it alters our
Perception and reaction to pain by binding to opiate receptors in the cns and can also suppress the cough reflex but really the reason we give this is a lot of times for patients like post-op pain or general pain in the hospital and this will help to kind of decrease that pain perception for patients a couple big things to keep in mind here is that these medications
Can cause hypotension so we want to monitor hemodynamics and respirations after administering so we really want to be close to our patient after we give this medication and we want to know what their blood pressure is and the respirations are before we even give it what’s their heart rate blood pressure respirations and we want to come back and make sure that we’re
Watching that closely so that we don’t depress the cns too much to the point that they go into respiratory failure we’re they go into severe hypotension another thing to keep in mind here we talked about this with acetaminophen before is that we don’t want to exceed four grams of acetaminophen in a day this can cause gi bleeding it can be very bad for the liver for
The gi so we really want to stay below four grams of acetaminophen daily usually your medication your computer as you scan a patient and give them certain types of medications it’s going to kind of tally up how much you dominican we’ve given them and we’ll make sure that we don’t go over that for gram limit now for our opioids you remember that our our antidote
For opioids is narcan so if a patient does go into respiratory failure or they they stop being as arousal we give them narcan to try to reverse the cns depression and to wake them up and get them alert again so again a medication you’re going to see a very often in your in your time in a hospital the biggest things i want you to keep in mind here are the importance
Of monitoring cns and the importance of monitoring that they don’t get more than the four grams leah cinnamon if in a day this has been another episode of the med master podcast by n ar s ng comm to get our free cheat sheet cover than fifty most commonly prescribed medications head over to nrs ng comm / 15 meds that’s in our s ng comm / 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 / 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 l you
Transcribed from video
Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen Nursing Considerations, Side Effects, and Mechanism of Action By NURSINGcom
