Christina Rafano covers asthma nursing interventions for NCLEX prep: position patients in high Fowler's, give bronchodilators first, wait five minutes, then steroids. Have patients rinse their mouth after inhaled steroids and maintain IV access. She uses the mnemonic ASTHMA to help you remember the key steps.
Hey there, my friend. My name is Christina Rafano from nursingsos.com and today in this video, we are going through the nursing interventions that you might do for a patient with asthma. I'll also walk you through the key nclex points that are most likely to show up on your exams so you'll be a lot more prepared. So hit that subscribe button and click the notification bell and let's dive in. Now real quick, I want to make sure that you know about my free study guide pack that I have for you which is going to help you so much in med surg. Study guides are an awesome tool to use to help you learn things faster in nursing school and I have a pack of 10 of them that I want to send to you. I'm going to put the link to these down below in the description for you to check them out after you watch this video. So anytime we study a disorder like this in nursing school, it's so, so, so important to understand the pathophysiology first because then we can connect the nursing interventions back to the patho and critical thinking about it. So what's happening here during asthma is that there is an inflammatory response in the lungs where the airways in the lungs are becoming inflamed, they're constricting and they're swelling, making it harder and harder and harder to breathe. Now, if you want a deep dive on the pathophysiology of asthma and the key critical thinking points to know about it, definitely check out this video here that I have for you that walks you through all of them. So, so there are several nursing interventions that you might do for a patient with asthma and to make it super duper easy on you. They all have to do with helping the patient breathe better. So that's our goal, right? To help the patient breathe better and get more oxygen to their body. You know that I am all about critical thinking and helping you learn how to critically think in nursing school. So we always want to connect the nursing interventions back to the pathophysiology, right? So that you understand why we're doing these things. We don't want to just memorize a list of things. We need to know why we are doing these nursing interventions because then you will be so much more prepared to critically think during your nursing school exams and the nclex. So let's run through the list of nursing interventions here real quick and then we will dive into each one of them and walk through the critical thinking behind it. So the nursing interventions for asthma are the position them properly in a high Fowler's position, give medications and oxygen as prescribed. And do a lot of patient education around medications and finding their asthma triggers. I have a fun memory trick to help you remember these things. Think asthma A S T, H, M A albuterol, bronchodilators, steroids triggers. Looking for the cause? High Fowler's position, Maintain IV access and administer oxygen. Let's talk about positioning first. The NCLEX loves to test you on patient positioning for asthma. Sitting up in a Fowler's or high Fowler's position will allow the lungs to expand easier and get more air. So a high Fowler's position is the best position to help them breathe easier. And of course, for asthma, and especially chronic and more severe asthma, it's common for the patient to be on medications to help control it it on a daily basis. And you'll need to make sure to walk them through what medications that they have prescribed to them to really make sure that they're using them properly. The most common medications that you might give for asthma are supplemental oxygen, of course, to help get more oxygen to their organs. And then bronchodilators to help dilate the airways in the lungs to allow more air to pass through. You might also give corticosteroids or inhaled cortical, inhaled steroids or leukotriene inhibitors, which will help reduce the inflammation in the lungs which is causing the problem in the first place. Now there are some key NCLEX points that the NCLEX loves to test you on here. If the patient is prescribed both a short acting bronchodilator like albuterol and an inhaled corticosteroid, which one will you give first? Well, let's think about this. Those short acting bronchodilators do exactly what they say. They open up the airways, they broncho dilate, right? And these act faster than corticosteroids. Corticosteroids take a longer time to work, days to weeks, to months, to hours. So you're going to give the bronchodilator first, which is going to act fast, to open the airways. And then you are going to give the corticosteroid once the airways are already open because then more of that corticosteroid medication can get inside the lungs. So here's the correct order for this. Bronchodilators first and then you wait five minutes. That's the standard for nursing, is to wait five minutes in between. Remember that for nclex, that's the standard. And then you'll give the Corticosteroid. So here's a handy way to remember it. A, B, C Albuterol, bronchodilators, corticosteroids. You'll give albuterol and bronchodilators first and then you will give corticosteroids. Basically, if it has albuterol in it, you're going to give that first. If it doesn't have albuterol in it, you'll need to decide if it's a bronchodilator. If it is, you will give that first. But if it's a corticosteroid, you will give that one second. And here's another thing you will most likely be tested on in nursing school. After you give a corticosteroid an inhaled steroid, you must have the patient rinse their mouth out with water and spit it out. Corticosteroids can cause thrush in the mouth, so it's really important to have your patient rinse their mouth out with water and spit it out into the sink. So you should educate your patient on those two things because they will likely need to do that too when they go home. Use the bronchodilator first before the inhaled steroid and they should rinse their mouth out after using that inhaled steroid. And maintaining IV access with asthma patients is really important just in case there's an emergency and you need that immediate IV access. You'll also need to work with your patient to help educate them on track, tracking and finding triggers for their asthma. We want to reduce asthma attacks, and to do that, you'll need to help educate your patient to keep track of those asthma tracks, their triggers, what they're doing when they happen, or if there's any particular environment or situation that causes it. Now, the key thing to know about med surgeon nursing school is that it's not about memorizing things right. Your exams, they're going to focus on so heavily on critical thinking and how well you apply what you know to an exam question. So in this next video, I'm walking you through the pathophysiology of asthma so that you'll be able to more critically think about it better on your nursing exams and get those questions right. And be sure to download the free study guide pack that we talked about. And if you liked this video, hit that like button. Write love in the comments below to let me know that you loved it. Because that is what we do around here. And as always, my friends friend, go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will see you over there in that next video.
