As an advanced practice nurse assisting physicians in the diagnosis and treatment of disorders, it is important to not only understand the impact of disorders on the body, but also the impact of drug treatments on the body. The relationships between drugs and the body can be described by pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

Pharmacokinetics describes what the body does to the drug through absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion, whereas pharmacodynamics describes what the drug does to the body.

When selecting drugs and determining dosages for patients, it is essential to consider individual patient factors that might impact the patient’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes. These patient factors include genetics, gender, ethnicity, age, behavior (i.e., diet, nutrition, smoking, alcohol, illicit drug abuse), and/or pathophysiological changes due to disease.

For this Discussion, you reflect on a case from your past clinical experiences and consider how a patient’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes may alter his or her response to a drug.

To prepare:

• Review the Resources for this module and consider the principles of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.
• Reflect on your experiences, observations, and/or clinical practices from the last 5 years and think about how pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic factors altered his or her anticipated response to a drug.
• Consider factors that might have influenced the patient’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes, such as genetics (including pharmacogenetics), gender, ethnicity, age, behavior, and/or possible pathophysiological changes due to disease.
• Think about a personalized plan of care based on these influencing factors and patient history in your case study.

BY DAY 3 OF WEEK 1:

Post a description of the patient case from your experiences, observations, and/or clinical practice from the last 5 years. Then, describe factors that might have influenced pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes of the patient you identified. Finally, explain details of the personalized plan of care that you would develop based on influencing factors and patient history in your case. Be specific and provide examples.

BY DAY 6 OF WEEK 1:

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses and respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days by suggesting additional patient factors that might have interfered with the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes of the patients they described. In addition, suggest how the personalized plan of care might change if the age of the patient were different and/or if the patient had a comorbid condition, such as renal failure, heart failure, or liver failure.

SOLUTION :

Discussion Week 1

Factors that influence Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics processes in patients.

Pharmacokinetics can vary from person to person, and it is affected by age, gender, diet, environment, body weight and pregnancy, patient’s pathophysiology, genetics, and drug- drug or food-drug interactions. As we are changing our practice to advanced Practice Nurse it is important to understand medications and to understand how they work, there are so many different medicines with different ways of absorption, distribution, and excretion. Medicine therapy has a significant role in human life by improving the quality of life and prolonging life expectancy. Pharmacist profession is basically to serve the society as a profession in charge to ensure that proper utilization of medicines, devices, and service to accomplish the ideal therapeutic outcomes (American Pharmacist Association 2015) Each medication must be administered according to the order and the route. Medication given the wrong route can be very harmful. In my scenario I witnessed a patient who took medication in a different route. Pharmacodynamics describes the intensity of a drug effect in relation to its concentration in a body fluid, usually at the site of drug action. It can be simplified to ‘what the drug does to the body.

Past Clinical Experience

My experience I experienced a nurse who connected IV medication to the Peg Tube, and it took two hours after for the other nurses to find out. This Nurse was not able to follow the five-route check or misinterpreted the correct route for the medicines. This patient ended coding and was paralyzed. Institute of medicine estimated that seven thousand patients die annually from medication errors that happen both inside and outside hospitals (Schwinghammer Koehler ,2014)v……………………KINDLY CLICK ON THE PURCHASE ICON BELOW TO ACCESS THE ENTIRE SOLUTION FOR $12