NURS 251 Pharmacology COMPLETE Module 1 with Problem Set on the last pages 2025 actual document Portage Learning

NURS 251 Pharmacology COMPLETE Module 1 with Problem Set on the last pages 2025 actual document Portage Learning Module 1 1.1 : An Introduction to Pharmacology Concepts Pharmacology is the study or science of drugs. What is a drug? A drug is any chemical that affects the physiologic processes of a living organism. Commonly, the term drug refers to any medication that is used for diagnosing, curing, or treating disease. Drug Effects Drugs have many different effects on the body including the following: (1) therapeutic effects, (2) side effects, (3) adverse effects, and (4) toxic effects. Therapeutic effect is the desired drug effect to alleviate some condition or symptom. Side effects are the drug effect other than the therapeutic effect that are usually undesirable but not harmful. Adverse effect is a general term for undesirable and potentially harmful drug effects. Toxic effects are undesirable drug effects that implies the drug is poisoning the body and can be harmful or even life- threatening. Clinically, it is important to recognize the difference between these different ways drugs can affect the body. A simple side effect could be something as harmless as mild nausea after taking a medication that can be managed by taking it with food. The drug therapy can continue without a problem. However, adverse effects need to be assessed to determine whether there is any risk of harm. Drug therapy is often a risk vs. benefit assessment. The patient’s provider should weigh the risk of taking the medication vs. the benefit. It often comes down to the severity of the disease being treated to decide the number of adverse events that will be tolerated. A good example of this is chemotherapy treatments for cancer. There are often adverse events associated with these treatment regimens, yet the treatment is continued because the benefit of treating the cancer is greater than the adverse events the patient experiences. However, there are certainly times when a treatment becomes too toxic, and the patient is unable to tolerate the regimen. This is often a large part of managing a cancer patient’s treatment, to assess how they are handling the adverse effects associated with the treatment regimen and determine whether it is becoming too toxic and needs to be suspended.......