I go over common Medications you will encounter as an RT. Some common ones to name are albuterol, hypertonic saline, oxygen, etc… I go over how you will encounter this medication and what to expect when working as an RT.
Hey guys welcome back to my channel it’s been a busy few weeks so i haven’t been making any videos lately uh we’ve been kind of hit by delta so we’ve been all swimming in delta i’m back today to make another video today i’m going to be talking about medications you use as a respiratory therapist so if you’re interested in that topic if you just started nursing school
Or respiratory school and that’s something you want to know stick around and listen to more hey guys i’m daniel from dual air media and today i’m going to be talking about medications that you’re going to use as a respiratory therapist so i’d like to just start right away by talking about the most important medication that you’re going to use as an rt and that’s
Oxygen oxygen is oftentimes overlooked as a medication we just kind of use it so much we take it for granted but oxygen is very important and we got to always remember that if you’re putting somebody on something like a high flow vapor therm ervo or anything oxygen should be the first thing that you titrate because it is a medication we’re administering a drug into
A system which is o2 and let’s say you put somebody on 40 liters 100 percent on a airvo or on a vapor therm you want to titrate the oxygen first because it’s the medication uh that’s something that a lot of people don’t necessarily understand fully because it’s like let’s titrate the flow first but it’s more important to titrate medications always so if you put
Anybody on any kind of oxygen remember it is a medication you need an order for it and you most likely need to titrate it as fast as you can because you don’t want the patient depending on that medication now that we got out of the way let’s talk about the number one medication you’re going to use as a respiratory therapist and that’s albuterol now albuterol is a
Bronchodilator i’m not going to get into the actual physiology of it or the specifics but albuterol is something that you’re going to give for people to open up their airways it is a bronchodilator so it does help anybody who’s wheezing anybody who feels tight anybody who feels short of breath the way you’re going to deliver this medication the most is most likely
Going to be some kind of frequency either q6 q4 bid something like that you’re gonna give it to your patients so that they don’t get any worse or they actually start improving over time there are times where you’re gonna give albuterol in an hour long form or if it’s like a kid you might even give it for a few days long in my personal experience i’ve never seen
Anybody have a really bad negative reaction to albuterol i know that i’ve only had about five six years of experience so there’s still a possibility of me seeing that in the future but for the most part it’s pretty safe other than increasing your heart rate now if your heart rate does start going up a lot of doctors recommend giving level albuterol which is pretty
Much like albuterol it’s a right isomer uh the body doesn’t recognize it the same as it does to albuterol in my experience i’ve probably only seen a handful of people actually react differently to albuterol and love albuterol the studies that i’ve seen there hasn’t been that much of a significant increase or at least decrease in heart rate when switching over but
It’s still enough that if somebody has something like afib you don’t want to agitate that anymore with albuterol so anything you have at your disposal you’ll give it to them so lava butyrol which is zopanex is prescribed for people who don’t necessarily react to albuterol well or they have things like some kind of heart issues like uh afib or something like that
I have seen patients who when they got albuterol treatments they started shaking and they absolutely just got all jittery and they just couldn’t handle it when i gave them love albuterol they had no reaction so there has been a handful of patients that have had a reaction like that but for the most part albuterol safe for everybody now when you’re gonna be giving
Albuterol to a patient uh the dosages i mean it goes anywhere from you can give it 20 milligrams over a few hours or over an hour to uh somebody who’s in the ed uh to small doses like 2.5 or even 1.25 on patients in the floors now albuterol is going to work best with atrovent or epitropium bromide uh they work synergistically which means they work stronger together
So medications like atrovents block acetylcholine receptors that stop constriction of bronchioles and bronchi and albuterol actively dilates the bronchis and bronchioles so together they kind of work really well albuterol is given through multiple different ways you could either give it through a regular svn which lasts about 10-15 minutes a small volume nebulizer
Or you can give an hour long or over a few hour long kind of nebulizer you just have to dilute it with a lot of normal saline uh you could also give it through an inhaler form or sometimes there’s other kinds of ways of doing it like aerogen so that’s going to be something that you’re going to see and you’re going to pretty much deal with every single day as an rt
Get to know your albuterol get to know your attribute this is something that you need to know after your albuterols what you’re going to be dealing with a lot of is hypertonic salines or some version of a saline now the hypertonic salines are used primarily to loosen up secretions if a patient has really thick secretions you’re going to have to give them hypertonic
Saline some hospitals like using hypertonic saline some don’t uh every kind of place you go to is gonna have a little bit of a different preference uh there’s three percent seven percent and you’re gonna give uh depending on what kind of doctors or what kind of schools they went to they’re gonna either prescribe only three percent for everybody or only seven
Percent for everybody uh the seven percent have been shown to help with really thick secretions they’re really beneficial for people that have disease processes like cystic fibrosis or if somebody has a really bad case of pneumonia and they just can’t loosen up the secretions are really thick um it has been shown to help that usually hypertonic saline is going
To be given right after an albuterol treatment or some kind of other bronchodilator treatment because there is a small chance that you can have a bronchoconstriction so the hypertonic saline is best given after some kind of bronchodilator so that doesn’t happen these treatments are usually given with uh ippv therapies or some other kind of uh therapies that
Help loosen up secretions so you might give it with the metanab uh you might give it with an acapella device or any different device that actually helps the patient loosen up the secretions this is what it’s for so it’s for bronchial hygiene or pulmonary toilet the next medication you’re going to see a lot of if you work in the ed as an rt is racemic epi racemic
Epiracemic epinephrine is given for strider so any kind of upper airway mostly like around the glottis and just below like pretty much in the trachea any kind of inflammation there uh the racemic epi is gonna help lower that inflammation so for kids that are coughing that have like a very croup cough or very striatus cough if you give them a little bit of racemic
It’s definitely going to go a long way you can actually hear within a few minutes it starts opening up their airways in patients that get extubated and shortly after that they develop strider and strider is this really high pitched sound that comes from the throw the racemic epi typically helps pretty drastically sometimes you might have to give it every few hours
Sometimes you just have to give it only once and it goes away for good but rasima kapi is something that you’re going to see it’s something that you should be aware of in case you excavate somebody and they start developing schreider or you have somebody that comes in through the ed and you could clearly hear that that strider sound that comes from their throat or
From their cough or something else the next medication you’re gonna give a lot of is some kind of um bronchopulmonary toilet medication or pulmonary hygiene medication and that’s mucomist or dornace alpha typically these are given for patients that have cystic fibrosis patients that have cystic fibrosis usually have sodium channel problems that they produce a lot
Of secretions a lot of mucus that’s very hard and so these medications do help with that i’ve been seeing a lot of doctors prescribing it for people that have really bad cases of pneumonia or really unique cases of pneumonia that they just can’t get rid of so in those kind of situations pulmozyme or dornes alpha or mucomist is going to be given to help actually
Break away the secretions the the phlegm or whatever you want to call it uh this medication mucus smells really really bad it smells like rotten eggs so if you do give this medication just be aware of the fact that you might want to have some kind of extra protection um also dornay salfa is a medication that requires a special nebulizer so if you’re studying for
Some kind of finals or if you’re going to come across this remember that there’s extra precautions with these medications so just kind of be aware of what your hospital teaches and what the protocol is at your facility next medications that you’ll see as an rt is going to be your corticosteroids these are typically given bid in the morning and at night and these
Are not necessarily to help fight a problem they’re actually given more prophylactically now if a patient has some kind of upper airway inflammation if they sound very hoarse if they have some kind of disease process like copd then they’ll probably have some kind of inflammation problem in their upper airways and with that corticosteroids do help so there’s many
Corticosteroids you can give whether it’s inhaled or just a dpi or inhaler metered dose inhaler but regardless don’t forget they should rinse their mouth after you give them any kind of corticosteroid and there’s also an effect of long-term steroid use with long-term steroid use there’s uh there’s certain disease processes that actually follow that so be aware of
That and be mindful of what you’re giving them now the reason you give them uh something to rinse their mouth with afterwards is because they can develop a yeast infection in their mouth and that’s called oral thrush so make sure they thoroughly rinse their mouth make sure they maybe use some kind of chlorhexidine or some kind of mouthwash also typically water is
Good enough but you never really know you can never be too safe if you’ve never seen oral thrush google it it’s very nasty it’s painful and it’s a common thing that happens if you don’t rinse your mouth thoroughly after taking a corticosteroid inhaler there are other medications that you give as a therapist just knowing the ones i covered is pretty much going to
Get you solid for working as an rt remember those doses remember exactly what comes with giving them what you need to be worried about what you need to watch for uh the other medications are important but there’s so many little uh specific ones like lidocaine that’s inhaled or tobromyosin and antibiotic i don’t really necessarily want to go over it just because
You don’t see it as often i mean maybe if you work in a specific hospital but where i work at i don’t really see it too often so i didn’t really want to cover it the ones i covered are things you should be familiar with thank you guys for watching let me know if there’s any other video topics that you want me to talk about next video i want to make is about how
Much rts make and what the salary is for an rt if that’s something that’s interesting let me know so i can actually speed up the process to make that video next week thank you guys for watching have a great day
Transcribed from video
Respiratory Therapist Medications By Doldier Media
