The purpose of this course is to provide nurses with the knowledge required for safe drug delivery based on standardized operational guidelines. Preprocedural, intraprocedural, and postprocedural patient care are presented, as well as a thorough review of the drugs used, their advantages and disadvantages, and the safe administration of these agents. In addition, members of the public may use this course to enhance their personal knowledge of the subject matter presented.
Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:
1. Define moderate sedation, including the goals and objectives.
2. Detail the necessary components of the preprocedural patient care period, including patient assessment, selection, and preparation.
3. List the duties and responsibilities of those who provide care for the patient receiving moderate sedation medications.
4. Detail patient care provided during the postsedation period, including the minimal parameters that should be met by the patient prior to discharge after sedation.
5. Present the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods and routes of medication administration.
6. Review the most commonly used pharmacologic agents for moderate sedation.
7. List the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of pulse oximetry and end-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring in the sedation setting.
8. Describe the various techniques for cardiac monitoring. Explain the advantages of each of these methods.
9. Outline the role of bispectral indexing in moderate sedation patients.
10. Develop a sedation documentation form that includes the appropriate information.
11. Discuss the most common complications occurring during or after moderate sedation.
12. Outline the anatomic and physiologic differences between children and adults and how these differences impact pediatric moderate sedation patients.
13. Describe the anatomic and physiologic differences in the elderly and the impact of these differences on the administration of sedation.
14. Explain how sedation practices should be altered in sedating the obstetric patient.
15. Review issues that impact moderate sedation administration for patients in the intensive care unit or those undergoing procedural interventions.
16. Identify practice issues for nurses administering moderate sedation.
This 15-hour continuing education course is available for download for professional development; if continuing education credit is desired, please see instructions included in eBook.
