Another Repetition of Blood Pressure Foundations (Nursing)

00:01 Hi. Welcome to our video on medications for hypertension.

00:05 In this video series we’ll focus on beta blockers, but as with all our blood pressure medications, I wanna review the categories for blood pressure.

00:14 Normal blood pressure is now less than 120 and less than 80.

00:19 Remember when hypertension used to be greater than 140 over 90, well we’ve changed these standards over the past few years.

00:26 You’re considered elevated if you’re blood pressure is 120 to 129 systolic and less than 80 diastolic.

00:34 Now you’re at stage I hypertension if your systolic is 130 to 139 and your diastolic is 80 to 89.

00:42 You’re at stage II if you’re 140 or higher systolically and 90 or higher diastolically.

00:49 Now the last category is there to really reinforce this concept in your mind.

00:53 A hypertensive crisis is a systolic pressure higher than 180 and higher than 120 systolically.

01:02 This number should really grab your attention, so if that’s unfamiliar to you make sure you have that in your notes.

01:08 This patient needs advanced medical attention to bring that blood pressure down.

01:14 Now let’s do another quick review the medications that we use to treat hypertension.

01:19 The ones we’re gonna talk about first have some great reminders with them.

01:23 ACE inhibitors, if you’re looking at their generic name, all end in -pril, P-R-I-L.

01:30 Hey, in any help you can get and tricks and strategies for remembering generic names, I say make sure you use them cuz there are lots of drug names to remember.

01:39 ARBs, angiotensin II receptor blockers end in -tan.

01:44 Beta blockers, the ones we are talking about now are -olol’s, O-L-O-L.

01:50 And calcium channel blockers end in P-I-N-E.

01:54 Now the next groups of meds we’re gonna review don’t really have any cool endings to go with them, but they do an important job in your body. We’ll talk about the sympatholytic drugs.

02:06 Other than beta blockers, the sympatholytic drugs go against the sympathetic nervous system stimulation response, so remember, with the sympathetic nervous system, your heart rate goes up, your contractility goes up and your blood pressure goes up.

02:20 A sympatholytic drug is gonna go against all those reactions where you’ll have lower heart rate and lower blood pressure.

02:27 We have direct vasodilators and we also have some selective aldosterone receptor antagonist.