The journey known as 'The drugs round'

'Understand, just take his hand.
He's the medicine man'

                                      Pantera (1990)

Hello fellow students, nurses and anyone else who reads this blog.

Well it's been 2 weeks since I started my placement on Medical Rehab... What a difference!!! Going from an acute surgical Ward where everyone is running around looking after pre and post operative patients, to looking after long term conditions patients that are undergoing rehab and waiting for social placement is a huge transition. Add to this the transition from Assistant Practitioner to student nurse... It's more difficult than I expected.

The main thing that is different and I'm having to get my head around is the drugs round. This is something new to me. OK, I know the names of some drugs and what they are for... But that's it... Superficial knowledge. This is something that I need to change as I realised that only knowing what system/area drugs fall under just won't do - Cardiac, water tablet, antibiotic...

I started my journey known as 'The drugs round' by shadowing my mentor on my 1st shift while they did the drugs round. We were only on the 1st person when my journey started and my mentor turned to me:'Digoxin, what is it?' This question caught me slightly off guard as I wasn't expecting the this question (I don't know why I thought this wasn't going to happen), lucky for me I new the answer to this question: 'It's a cardiac medication' There you go, I answered the question: 'What type of cardiac medication?' This I wasn't expecting, I thought that 'cardiac medication' was the right answer! Again though, I knew the answer to this as well: 'It's a digital drug.' BOOM! Knocked it out of the park! Dam I'm good! Oh, hang on... What is she doing... Wait... More questions?!? 'Good. Now what does it do, when would I omit this and why?' Now I was stuck. I thought about it and remembered that the patient had AF and so put 2-and-2 together: 'It helps regulate the pulse and brings it down. You wouldn't give it if the person was bradycardic.' And there was my answer, a bit vague, but an answer none the less... But not the full answer my mentor wanted. 'You need to check their pulse, if it is less than 60bpm then you would consider omitting it. But 1st consult with the Ward Dr. Depending on the rate they may also do bloods for digoxin toxicity. ' And there you go, something I never knew... Digoxin  toxicity! And so, that was the start of my journey now known as 'The drugs round'. 

Since that day I've told myself that I need to know more about what medications are commonly used by my patients. This included what the drug was for, what type/category of drug it was, what the drug did, and what the contraindications of the drug were. Me placement is in medical rehad meaning that most of the elderly patients were on cardiac medication, and so I've started to try and swat up on this area. But with sub categories like digitals, Beta blockers, Vasodilators... It's confusing. That said, I've found patterns in the names. Most of the subcategories can be worked out by the end of the name - 'lol', 'pril', 'startine'... These simple has made it so much easier for me to remember what's what.

Right, well that's enough from me for now, I'm going to go look up some more medications. Until next time peeps 😁