Opioid Pain Medications: In a Nutshell (Nursing)

00:01 Let's wrap up this series.

00:03 Opioids are drugs that act on the opioid receptors primarily the mu and kappa as agonists, partial agonist or antagonists.

00:12 Morphine is the “gold standard” for opioid agonist and is used as a standard to measure the potency of newer opioids.

00:19 Opioids can cause respiratory depression, let me pause right there.

00:25 That’s one of the number one takeaway you need from this video series.

00:29 Opioids cause respiratory depression so you want to use them with extreme caution with other CNS depressant medications and you want to educate your patients that they should never be taken with alcohol.

00:42 Now opioids also cause some other uncomfortable things like constipation, urinary retention, orthostatic hypotension, really upset stomach and vomiting, and elevated ICP.

00:54 Neonates, and infants and the elderly are particularly sensitive to the effect of the opioids so use them with extreme caution and consultation with the health care provider.

01:05 Tolerance to opioids can develop with extended use and opioid should be weaned versus stopped abruptly so that your patients don’t experience withdrawal.

01:14 Fentanyl is up to 100x more potent than morphine and is available in four different types of routes.

01:22 Remember Meperidine is no longer considered a first line pain medication because of the risk of seizures if it’s used for greater than 48 hours.

01:30 Oxycodone and hydrocodone all have similar pain relief equivalency.

01:35 Thank you for watching out video today.