Pharmacology CE

The BoardVitals Pharmacology CME Review offers clinicians 25 contact hours and over 200 Pharmacology board review questions. The questions cover key topics including care of patients using pharmaceuticals, pharmacology of common medications, and evidence-based changes into practice. This question bank will assist Nurse Practitioners and APRNs with certification and recertification.

The BoardVitals Pharmacology CE Review also features:

• Quick and Convenient CME
• Computer, phone, and tablet access
• Constantly updated up-to-date questions
• Questions that are targeted specifically to the exam
• Online CME tracker
• 100% Pass Guarantee

After completing this activity, you should be able to:

• Identify important pathophysiology concepts common to the care of patients using pharmaceuticals
• Describe the pharmacology of common medications
• Select the proper pharmacotherapeutics based on the clinical presentation.

Target Audience: Nurse Practitioners and APRNs

Stay on top of your game with the StatPearls Nurse Practitioner Unlimited CE programs. With 6,042 activities, StatPearls is the largest CME provider in the world. These Pub-Med Indexed articles are categorized into 23 specialty areas for Nurse Practitioners, which lets you better access activities that will make the biggest impact on your practice. One subscription allows access to all the activities, including all state-requirements.

Pricing Options

• 6 Month subscription: All 6,334 CE Activities – $249 per 6 months
• Annual subscription: All 6,334 CE Activities – $349 per 1 year

After completing this online CE course, nurses will better be able to:

• Understand the concept of pharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics.
• Analyze the relevance of the four aspects of pharmacokinetics that include absorption distribution
  metabolism and excretion.
• Discuss the various routes of administration and the related effect on the pharmacokinetics of a drug.
• Analyze the various chemical changes that take place in the body as a result of the pharmacodynamics of
  the drug.
• Discuss drug-drug and drug-food interactions and their relationship to the development of adverse effects and toxicity.
• Explore precipitating factors related to the occurrence of side and adverse effects.
• Analyze the etiology of hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylaxis, and which actions are taken to manage them.
• Differentiate between drug tolerance, cumulative effects of drugs, and drug toxicity.
• Review precautions that should be taken when giving a medication and contraindications that can make
  administering a drug dangerous or detrimental to the patient.

Target Audience: Registered Nurses

Every 7 minutes in our country, a person dies from a drug overdose, while a child is also born approximately every 30 minutes dependent on opioids. How do we as healthcare professionals offer non-stigmatic patient care and contribute to the progress of society in the right direction? Substance use disorder (addiction) is likened to an iceberg or a weed, in that the issues underneath the surface are typically even more complicated than what is viewed from the surface. Addiction spans hundreds of substances of abuse highlighted by stimulants (cocaine and methamphetamine), cannabis (plant, synthetics, and extracts), and opioids (heroin, fentanyl, and carfentanyl). As one can recall with the substance of ethyl alcohol (i.e. beer, wine, and hard liquor), a substance may never actually chemically change, yet can move across legal classifications of substances, leaving all healthcare professionals in need of knowledge on all substances of abuse. Opioid use disorder (opioid addiction) is combated with the medication-assisted treatments (MAT) of naltrexone, methadone, and buprenorphine, while opioid overdose respiratory depression is reversed with naloxone. Over the course of this activity, we will aim for “higher” education on all of these dynamic aspects. Unlike opioids, this activity is sure to open your eyes and possibly even elevate your blood pressure and/or heart rate!!!

With eight categories of HIV meds now available, healthcare professionals need to be up to date about these therapies. Whether using regimens from 20 years ago, or the newest drugs healthcare professionals need to be monitoring adherence to those regimens. By providing data from the San Francisco Study to show the needs for 95% adherence. This Florida-approved course will also describe the advantages and disadvantages of each category of drugs, as well as those individual drugs.

According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 3.8 million people (1.4% of those ages 12 or older) reported misusing prescription pain relievers, while another 329,000 people reported using heroin. Within the same year, 52,404 lethal overdoses took place, making drug overdose the leading cause of accidental death within the United States. Stancliff et al estimated that as of 2012, approximately 80% of people dependent on heroin or prescription opioids were not engaged in any treatment and many in treatment do not use the most effective medication-assisted treatments available to them.

Despite recent increased awareness of opioid use disorder (OUD) and efforts to improve access to care, several barriers to treatment still exist, including financial, geographic, regulatory, and social. In 2012, only 2.2% of physicians in the United States obtained waivers to prescribe buprenorphine for the treatment of OUD. Of those who received waivers, 41.6% were psychiatrists. This may be perceived as a potential barrier to OUD treatment as patients are often resistant to referrals to psychiatric and/or addiction clinics given the stigmas commonly surrounding addiction and mental health. Furthermore, physicians with waivers were found to practice primarily in urban settings, leaving a large portion of the rural population without access to buprenorphine treatment.

With all this in mind, education is needed in regards to current and emerging treatment options for OUD available to multiple patient populations. Also, with the deaths due to drug overdoses still elevated, education on how to recognize and reverse an opioid overdose is needed.

This presentation will address the above needs by discussing the science behind opioid use disorder as well as reflect upon current statistics associated with its impact on the United States. During the discussion, opioid overdose risks will be discussed and participants will be able to practice recognizing key symptoms of an overdose situation. Steps of using naloxone will be discussed and connected to how to appropriately seek out treatment for maintenance of opioid use disorder. Finally, new buprenorphine products and the potential role of naltrexone will be applied to this stigmatized population.

Countless patients choose to ingest illicit substances while also utilizing prescription medications, and as healthcare professionals, we are left with barely any education on these substances. More education is needed in order to actually provide tangible life-saving, or at least life-improving, patient education.

Forget polypharmacy, what about poly substance abuse? Every 7 minutes an American dies of a drug overdose, propelling pharmacists to expand our knowledge on illicit substances. We humans have always aimed to experience the amplified effects of natural and synthetic substances that produce euphoria. The line between clinical and criminal utilization of substances if often blurred. In our society today, we have a very “objective” classification of substances based on generally accepted medical use and a respective propensity to become habit forming. However, as one can recall with the substance of ethyl alcohol (i.e., beer, wine, and hard liquor), a substance may never actually chemically change, yet can move across legal classifications of substances. How does that happen? Well, join our discussion on illicit substances to learn how numerous illicit substances have similar, if not the same, mechanisms of action as legal prescription medications readily available today. The time has come (Just Say NOW) to progress from “Just Say No” to “Just Say Know”!

This activity aims to assist healthcare professionals in understanding how cannabis can take its place in the medical world. It discusses medicinal cannabis’ uses, modes of administrations, mechanism of action, common drug interactions, and considerations for special populations.

This 2-hour CE discusses vaccine recommendations, as outlined in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Immunization Schedule. It presents a comparison of COVID-19 vaccine formulations, updates of authorized and approved vaccines, updates on vaccines to other infectious diseases such as varicella, pneumococcus and hepatitis, and reminders of contraindications and precautions for vaccines covered.

This video activity focuses on ways to help early detection of breast cancer by learning the risk factors, the different screening and diagnostic modalities and guidelines to what kind of screening is needed, and most importantly, when should screening begin.