Discussion: Pharmacological Treatments

Discussion: Pharmacological Treatments

Discussion: Pharmacological Treatments

Create a 10–12-slide PowerPoint presentation to identify medications associated with a chosen disease or health condition, explain the actions and side effects of the medications, and discuss any controversies related to the medications. Explain a treatment regime, including pharmacology, for the disease or health condition you selected, along with how the treatment regime may affect a client’s lifestyle.

By having a thorough understanding of pharmacology, nurses can eliminate possible medication errors in their nursing practices. The basic principles of pharmacology include pharmacokinetics (what the body does to a drug) and pharmacodynamics (what a drug does to the body). Pharmacology plays a significant role in the nursing profession, so it is extremely important for nurses to understand the actions of the pharmacological agents they will administer to patients in order to intervene appropriately if necessary.

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Another critical skill for a nurse is the ability to apply and evaluate evidence-based practices, principles, models, and pharmacological guidelines and protocols commonly used in nursing practice. Understanding how specific protocols and guidelines are developed will aid nurses in treating patients with a multitude of physiological and psychological conditions.

Nurses must be able to measure outcomes of pharmacological interventions when caring for patients. The effective use of evidence-based practice guidelines, models, and principles is one way that nurses can analyze quality outcomes for the pharmacological treatments used for patients.

Pharmacology includes different categories of major drugs used in the treatment of primary diseases. The same drug may be used to treat more than one disease or condition, while two patients with the same disease may require different drug treatments. In addition, the professional nurse must be aware of what types of things can influence a patient’s response to a drug. Some things are obvious—other medications, for example—while some are less so. Things like age, weight, herbs—even foods people eat every day—can influence how a person responds to a particular drug. At times, even a strong cultural belief can influence how a drug will react. Nurses who administer drugs have a responsibility to assess patients for both the desired response, as well as for any unwanted and potentially harmful reactions that may occur.

Imagine your supervisor has asked you to conduct a lunch and learn session to educate your fellow nursing staff on pharmacological interventions.

Preparation
Select a disease or health condition that requires pharmacological intervention. You may choose any disease or health condition you wish, but the disease or health condition must be relevant to nurses from a variety of settings (for example: ER, pediatrics, public health, et cetera).

Requirements
Once you have selected a disease or health condition, create a PowerPoint presentation you could use in your lunch and learn session, including the following:

Identify the disease or health condition you have chosen, along with the areas where nurses are likely to see it. (Do this in the agenda slide or next slide after the agenda.)
Identify the three drugs used most often in the treatment of the disease or health condition.
Explain the types of actions, side effects, indications, and contraindications that could be expected from the pharmacological treatment.
Describe the treatment regime most often prescribed for the disease or health condition. This should include pharmacology but not be limited to pharmacology.
Explain how the treatment regime (including pharmacology) may impact a client’s lifestyle. Consider things such as finances, ease or complexity of administration, instructions (frequency, duration), et cetera.
Describe how a nurse should monitor a client being treated for the disease or health condition in order to obtain a quality patient outcome.
Explain any controversies associated with the drugs used in the treatment. For example, is there a black box warning with any of the drugs?
Use the notes section of each slide to expand your points or draft your mock oral presentation (or both) and reference your resources. Use at least 3 peer-reviewed or professional resources to support your work in this assessment. Be sure your PowerPoint includes a title slide, a slide with your agenda or list of topics to be covered, and a reference slide. Follow current APA style and formatting guidelines for your citations and references.

Additional Requirements
Number of slides: 10–12, not including the title and reference slides.
Be creative. Consider your intended audience.
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Discussion: Pharmacological Treatments

Discussion: Pharmacological Treatments

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.