Cough Suppressants (Nursing)

00:00 Now, cough suppressants.

00:03 Have you ever had someone in your house have a hacking cough? And you're trying to sleep and all you can hear is them coughing? I'm gonna talk about what that means.

00:13 I know when I teach in nursing school and when proctoring exams and somebody in the room has a cough, I worry about their safety 'cause the students just kind of give him the stare of death when they keep coughing during a test.

00:25 But you know how it is when you have a cough.

00:27 The more you try to not cough, the more it seem you need to cough.

00:32 Let's talk about some over the counter treatments.

00:34 Antitussive means anti - against, tussive - cough.

00:39 So these are cough suppressants that are available.

00:41 Dextromethorphan, now it doesn't have any Opioid content.

00:45 It's a non-opioid cough suppressant.

00:49 It's available over the counter.

00:50 It's an opiod derivative but you don't really have the euphoric effect if you take it in a normal dosage.

00:59 Now, some of you probably already know that this is a drug that can be abused.

01:04 That particulary in our teenage population, they will drink large quantities of this.

01:10 And when they drink this cough medicine, they end up like on a PCP-like dissociative mind trip.

01:16 So this one is another drug that is at risk for abuse.

01:20 It's available, you usually don't have to show your ID to purchase it.

01:24 And so if it's abused, you're gonna end up with this PCP like experience.

01:29 Now Dextromethorphan is in lots and lots of over the counter cold medicine that are combinations.

01:35 So you always wanna be careful when you are a family member or your patients are combining multiple cold medicines because they can overdose some things like tylenol or dextromethorphan.

01:48 Now, it's a pretty good antitussive.

01:50 I know when I have a cold, I use it.

01:53 But you wanna keep in mind: take it within normal doses and don't take multiple over the counter cold medicines because you're risking overdosing on that.

02:02 Now, the next group does involve opioids.

02:05 Remember, dextromethorphan is opioid derivative but it doesn't have that euphoria if you take it in appropriate amount.

02:12 Prescription antitussives contain codeine and this is more effective than dextromethorphan but you have to have a script for it.

02:20 You gotta have a health care provider write the prescription for you.

02:24 It is 1/10th a dose that we use for pain in codeine so you would have to really drink a lot of it to get a super high buzz but it is very effective in treating your cough.

02:37 So when it comes to cough, you have an over the counter option and you have a prescription option.

02:43 Both of them are either an opioid derivative or an actual opioid.

02:47 But remember it is in a much smaller dosage than we would use for pain control.