Overusing or Abusing Prescription Pain Medications Assignment

Reflection Response Instructions: Submit a 1 page reflection response to the questions below. Please use APA format and include one scholarly reference.
How do you identify a patient that may be overusing or abusing prescription pain medications? How would you handle this concern if you are the NP seeing this patient? Overusing or Abusing Prescription Pain Medications Assignment

medication in a manner or dose different from what the doctor prescribed. Prescription pain medications refer to the variety of over the counter and prescription drugs used to treat pain. They include narcotic drugs such as codeine, hydrocodone, meperidine, oxycodone, and tramadol (Takahashi et al., 2021). Many people overuse their prescription pain medications to fasten their pain relief without knowing the dangers of their heinous acts. It is easy to identify patients that are abusing or overusing these prescription pain medications. Different drugs have different signs and symptoms when used, and one can tell which drug a patient is overusing due to their other mind-altering properties. For patients that are abusing opioids such as Percocet and Oxycontin, the following signs and symptoms are common: Nausea, frequent constipation, euphoria or feeling high most of the time, reduced rate of breathing, drowsiness, increased pain relief dose requirement, increased sensitivity to pain for excess doses, and poor coordination. Overusing or Abusing Prescription Pain Medications Assignment

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Stimulants such as amphetamine, dextroamphetamine, methylphenidate, and Anti-anxiety medications such as diazepam and alprazolam show different signs and symptoms from the opioids and are easy to tell. If abused, anti-anxiety medications show symptoms such as confusion, slurred speech, dizziness, poor concertation, memory problems, drowsiness, and unsteady walking. On the other hand, an individual abusing stimulants shows signs and symptoms such as high blood pressure, reduced appetite, increased body temperature or fever, increased alertness, insomnia, paranoia, agitation, and an irregular heartbeat (Takahashi et al., 2021). Other signs of prescription drug medication abuse include high mood swings, inability to make good decisions, forging prescriptions, and appearing to be consistently high (Hsu, 2017).

Handling Prescription drug abuse or overuse

As a nurse practitioner seeing patients abuse or overuse prescription pain medications, I would initiate emergency medical assistance even if the patient seems better. After ensuring that the patient is in stable condition and that no danger is likely to occur, I would initiate a program to let these patients understand the risks related to this act. Most patients overuse drugs to fasten their recovery without knowing that their actions can lead to dangerous complications and death. For opioids, I would brief the patient on complications such as reduced blood pressure, potential heart failure, coma, and death. Anti-anxiety medications slow breathing, memory issues, coma, withdrawal symptoms upon sudden stoppage, and death (Perrot et al., 2019). Finally, on complications, I would let the patients understand that stimulants can cause heart problems, dangerous fever, aggressiveness, hallucinations, paranoia, and seizures. I would also encourage parents to keep an eye on their teens by keeping their prescription drugs safe, ensuring they do not order online, and permanently disposing of their medications. Overusing or Abusing Prescription Pain Medications Assignment

Another way of handling patients overusing prescription pain medications is responding to the overdose, helping to overcome it, and supporting the patient’s breathing slowed breathing rate by administering supplementary oxygen or performing rescue breathing. This is primarily for those patients that are overusing opioids. Spontaneous breathing is regained, with minimal withdrawal symptoms after 3 to five minutes of naloxone administration, but the drug will always continue to work for the next 90 minutes. Finally, I would initiate a prescription drug monitoring program to reduce the cases of inappropriate prescriptions and curb the deaths related to drug overuse and abuse (Hsu, 2017). This will save the lives of many citizens who die every year due to drug overuse and related complications

References

Hsu, E. S. (2017). Medication overuse in chronic pain. Current pain and headache reports, 21(1), 1-7.

Perrot, S., Cittée, J., Louis, P., Quentin, B., Robert, C., Milon, J. Y., … & Baumelou, A. (2019). Self‐medication in pain management: The state of the art of pharmacists’ role for optimal Over‐The‐Counter analgesic use. European Journal of Pain, 23(10), 1747-1762.

Said, O., Elander, J., & Maratos, F. A. (2019). An international study of analgesic dependence among people with pain in the general population. Substance Use & Misuse, 54(8), 1319-1331. Overusing or Abusing Prescription Pain Medications Assignment

Takahashi, T. T., Ornello, R., Quatrosi, G., Torrente, A., Albanese, M., Vigneri, S., … & Martelletti, P. (2021). Medication overuse and drug addiction: a narrative review from addiction perspective. The journal of headache and pain, 22(1), 1-11. Overusing or Abusing Prescription Pain Medications Assignment