Cardiac Meds on the NCLEX

Cardiac meds are one of the most common medications given because people have a lot of cardiac issues! There’s hypertension, dysrhythmias, heart failure, myocardial infarctions, peripheral arterial disease, venous thromboembolisms plus more! Even though there are a lot of diseases, there’s only a few types of cardiac meds to give. This blog post goes over the most common cardiac meds on the NCLEX exam.

Get yourself a piece of paper and follow along with the video below. It’s only one page long and covers the most basic information about cardiac meds.

I’m always asking my students, “what’s that med for?” And basically what I’m looking for is:

• Classification and/or Condition

So I want to hear my student say something like this, “this med is an/a:

1. Antihypertensive: it’s to decrease blood pressure and heart
2. Blood thinner: it’s to decrease risk of blood clots for those with dysrhythmias
3. Diuretic: it helps a patient pee for those that have edema or FVO like heart failure
4. Digoxin: it helps decrease the heart rate with those with heart issues
5. Nitroglycerin or Nitrates: it helps vasodilate and decrease the BP for those with chest pain or having a myocardial infarction
6. Vasopressor: it helps increase the blood pressure for those with low BP, shock, bleeding or anaphylaxis

At the very least, a student needs to know the above information about cardiac meds on the NCLEX exam and for your nursing exams at school.

Now that you have the above information written down, now it’s time to know the more specific classifications and names of each main heading.

Antihypertensives

• A: Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs): they end in -SARTAN (losartan)
• A: ACE inhibitors: they end in -PRIL (enalapril)
• B: Beta blockers: they end in -LOL (atenolol)
• C: Calcium channel blockers: they end in -DIPINE (amlodipine)
  • there are 2 random CCBs
    • diltiazem and verapamil

Blood Thinners

• Antiplatelets: they are aspirin and those that end in -GREL (clopidogrel)
• Anticoagulants: they end in -PARIN (heparin and enoxaparin) and -ABAN, and warfarin
• Thrombolytics: they end in -ASE (alteplase)

Diuretics

There are 2 main types:

• Potassium-sparing diuretics: spironolactone
• Potassium-wasting diuretics: they end in -SEMIDE (furosemide)

Digoxin

• There’s only 1 you need to know!

Nitroglycerin/Nitrates

• They all have the word nitro or nitrate in them: mono dinitrate

Vasopressors

• These are meds that help increase the blood pressure such as epinephrine, norepinephrine and vasopressin (same thing as anti-diuretic hormone)

You can see my list of cardiac meds below. Practice writing it out a few times and you will definitely have the cardiac meds memorized!

If you are interested in checking out the NCLEX Nursing Nuggets Book go HERE. I use this book to review content such as cardiac meds for the NCLEX with my nursing students.

If you are interested in tutoring, please visit thenclextutor.com

Thank you for reading and/or watching!