Medications to Promote Sleep in Adults, Research Paper Example

There are several medications available to promote sleep in adults. This small research paper presents three most used sleep promoting drugs for adults and analysis what kind of precautions a nurse should take while giving sleep promoting medication to adults. The most used medications in sleep promotion are: Ambien Oral, Edlusar SI and Sonata Oral. All these medications can help adults, who are suffering from Insomnia.

Ambien Oral and Edlisar SI help adults to fall asleep faster and provide amazing night’s rest. As the both these medications belong to sedative hypnotics’ family, it acts on patient’s brain immediately to produce a calming effect. Sonata Oral is also another great medication to treat insomnia in adults but it will be used for short-term treatments. This medication can work better if an adult does not fall asleep in short term. This medication may not work on adults who have been continuously suffering from insomnia for a week or a couple of weeks. As this medication belongs to Zelepon, which is known as hypnotic, it works on certain main centers of brain to help adults fall asleep faster.

Nurses should take several precautions while giving sleep promoting medications to adults. Nurses should closely interact with adults to understand the potential sleep problem. Some adults may feel difficulty in falling asleep or awakening earlier or waking-up later than desired or nightmare problems. Unless a nurse know actual problem of adult, it is impossible to provide suitable medication for the disorder. Nurses should also enquire about any existing health problems while prescribing medications for sleep promotion in adults because most of the adults suffer from various diseases like Diabetes, Cardiac Disease and Tuberculoses. So, it is important to understand if they are already using any other medications for these diseases (Buscemi et al, 2007).

Most of the adults take self medications such as using OCT products, which contain alcohol, to fall sleep faster. It is also important for nurses to know if patients have been using any kind of self medication to treat insomnia (Roth, 2007). Educating patients, changing surrounding environment to induce sleep and facilitating behavioral changes help patients to relax themselves and fall asleep. Among all these above interventions, patient education should be given high priority. Nurses should educate patients in such a way that they can recognize the age related sleep changes, factors that affect sleep disorders and how to use therapeutic treatments (Buscemi et al, 2007). The more a patient knows about the therapeutic strategies, the better they will respond to the medications. Nurses should also use relaxation techniques to keep patient calm and cool because sleeplessness leads to anxiety and pain. Assessing current state of mind while giving medications would also help nurses to treat patients better. By assessing current state of mind, nurse can also understand the severity of the insomnia in an adult patient. Patients who are suffering from insomnia for longer period of time would undergo severe metal pain, anxiety, joint discomfort and psychological illness. If a nurse can find out these symptoms just by assessing the current state of mind, it would help in providing best and suitable medication (Rosenberg, 2006).

Sleeplessness in adults is very common in this pressurized working world. By taking well known medications and interventions of nurses, one can easily get over sleeplessness. Nurses should carefully evaluate a patient’s current state of mind before prescribing a medication. Enquiring about patient’s current health conditions and medications that are being taken would also help nurses to prescribe suitable medications. Nurses can provide best medication by deeper understanding of patient’s pain, educating the patient about therapeutic treatments and creating an environment, which lifts a patient’s current state of mind.

References

Buscemi N, Vandermeer B, Friesen C, Bialy L, Tubman M, Ospina M, Klassen TP, Witmans M. (2007). “The efficacy and safety of drug treatments for chronic insomnia in adults: a meta-analysis of RCTs”. J Gen Intern Med 22 (9): 1335–1350.

Rosenberg, RP. (2006). “Sleep maintenance insomnia: strengths and weaknesses of current pharmacologic therapies”. Ann Clin Psychiatry 18 (1): 49–56.

Roth, Thomas (15 August 2007). “Insomnia: Definition, Prevalence, Etilogy, and Consequences”. J Clin Sleep Med 3 (5 Suppl): S7–S10.