Cardiac Rhythms (reading, meds, simulator)
Summer vacation is almost over. I hope you’ve had a great time doing whatever you’ve been doing. Now it’s time to get back to work.
Here are some tips for 1st Year Nursing students – even if you aren’t one, you might find some of those tips will help you. Please share.
THINGS ON THE NCLEX
This section will have a couple of subjects / items that were on the NCLEX.
Today we’re going to talk about cardiac rhythms. It is one of those skills that might take awhile to learn, but once you do, you’ll remember them. While you’re taking the NCLEX most questions related to strips will ask about what you should do after you see a certain rhythm. So you’ll want to know not only the rhythm but what to do about it.
Cardiac Rhythms – a pdf. http://uthealth.utoledo.edu/depts/nursing/pdfs/Basic%20EKG%20Refresher.pdf
An excellent EKG simulator.
http://www.skillstat.com/tools/ecg-simulator
Cardiac Rhythms and their treatments.
http://acls-algorithms.com/rhythms
Tools you can use – I’ve used Khan Academy many times for math, I never knew that they had a section that was dedicated to the circulatory system, but they do and you should check it out.
NCLEX Drug Review –
Last issue : Acyclovir (Zovirax) Antiviral
This time – Atropine
Consult a doctor if you have a medical concern.
Helps keep your heart rate stable after a heart attack or during surgery. Lowers the amount of body fluids inside your mouth and throat before a surgery. This keeps you from possibly choking on your saliva while you are unconscious.
Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline
Epinephrine is used to treat a number of conditions including: cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis, and superficial bleeding. It has been used historically for bronchospasm and hypoglycemia, but newer treatments for these that are selective for β2 adrenoceptors, such as salbutamol are currently preferred.
While epinephrine is often used to treat cardiac arrest it has not been shown to improve long-term survival or improve mental function after recovery. It does, however, improve return of spontaneous circulation.
Epinephrine/adrenaline is the drug of choice for treating anaphylaxis.
More information on Cardiac Arrest – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_arrest
TRIVIA / Q AND A
What does the word stat mean? Where does it come from?
Stat is a common medical abbreviation used in emergency room language to mean that something is urgent. Stat is from the Latin statim, meaning ‘immediately’.
Contest – newsletter subscribers are automatically entered into our summer blast contest. We’ll be drawing for a $25 gift certificate from Amazon on August 30th. During July and August we’ll be giving you additional ways to win (mostly from sharing posts) – you can find our Facebook page here – https://www.facebook.com/NCLEXOnlineReview
Good Deals – Amazon still has their back to school deals going on – http://amzn.to/1THbMO6 My daughter is beginning her freshmen year of college. She had four classes this semester and one of the books we rented for around $25. We rented it from Amazon. The used price of the book was $100, the new price was over $150 and it was a book that she really wasn’t going to use but for this class (it was a communications book).
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