PHARMACOLOGY

At the end of both chapters, I discovered a “Quick Drug Guide” pertaining to the drugs for each medical condition, for this case: antihypertensive drugs and antidiabetic drugs. I found these extremely helpful in which I created charts out of them and added in some notes from the sections in the chapters. The majority of my clients in the Niagara College Dental Clinic either had hypertension or diabetes, and each would take different medications for these conditions. This “study session” helped me to fill in the gaps as I became familiar with the different drugs for either hypertension or diabetes, and what each do separately. Creating these charts also helped me out in the Niagara College Dental Clinic as I added them to my clinic book that I used during client care. Whenever I would have new clients with extensive pharmaceutical records, as soon as I would see drugs end in –pril (ACE Inhibitors), –sartan (ARBs), or –olol (Beta-Blockers) for example, allowed me to recognize that they are antihypertensive drugs that the client is taking before I would even go through the medical history with them. In regards to antidiabetic drugs, I learned that there is also human insulin that clients with diabetes can take. All along, I thought that the insulin they inject was just synthetic and acted as real insulin in the body, but actually there is both. Going through the different types of drugs and making my own charts out of the information really did help me to have a better understanding.