Pain Management and Analgesic Infusion Therapy Flashcards
7 cards from real CRNI practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Pain Management and Analgesic Infusion Therapy flashcards as text
When preparing medications for administration through an epidural catheter, which standard is most critical?
Answer: Only preservative-free medications and solutions must be used
Preservatives such as benzyl alcohol and phenol are neurotoxic and must never be used in epidural or intrathecal spaces; only preservative-free formulations are safe.
Which opioid is most widely used as the standard agent for IV patient-controlled analgesia in postoperative patients?
Answer: Morphine
Morphine is the most widely used and studied PCA opioid for postoperative pain management and serves as the reference standard against which other opioids are compared.
What is the maximum recommended duration of continuous IV ketorolac (Toradol) therapy in adults?
Answer: 5 days
IV ketorolac is limited to 5 days due to the risk of serious GI bleeding, renal toxicity, and inhibition of platelet aggregation with prolonged use.
Multimodal analgesia is a strategy that improves pain control by:
Answer: Combining agents with different mechanisms of action to achieve additive or synergistic effects
Multimodal analgesia combines drugs acting on different pain pathways (e.g., opioids, NSAIDs, acetaminophen, regional blocks) to improve analgesia while reducing side effects of any single agent.
Opioid tolerance in a patient receiving chronic analgesic infusion therapy is best described as:
Answer: A need for progressively higher doses to achieve the same level of analgesia
Tolerance is a pharmacological phenomenon where repeated opioid exposure reduces receptor responsiveness, requiring dose escalation to maintain the same analgesic effect.
A patient's pain is inadequately controlled with demand doses alone on PCA, with no basal infusion running. The appropriate first nursing action is to:
Answer: Contact the prescriber to reassess and modify the pain management plan
Changing PCA parameters requires a physician order; the nurse's role is to assess, document, and communicate uncontrolled pain to the prescriber for a plan modification.
Which medication is the pharmacological antidote for opioid-induced respiratory depression?
Answer: Naloxone (Narcan)
Naloxone is a competitive opioid receptor antagonist that rapidly reverses opioid-induced respiratory depression, sedation, and analgesia.