Dosage Calc, part 8: Drug Label Components

Hi, this is Cathy with Level Up RN. In this video, I will be explaining the key components on a drug label. You can find all the information that I'll be covering in this video in our Level Up RN dosage calculation workbook. If you are in nursing school, then you know how important it is to master dosage calculations, and our workbook will help you do just that. In a nutshell, our workbook contains all different types of dosage calculation problems that you are likely to encounter in nursing school, and we demonstrate how to solve each problem using multiple methods so you can pick the way that makes the most sense to you.

Sometimes when you are given a dose calculation problem, you will be given a picture of a drug label, and you will need to look on that label to pick out key information that will be required to do the dose calculation problem. So it's going to be important for you to know your way around a drug label, and how to find those key pieces of information. So on this drug label on the screen, we have the generic name of the medication pointed out, which is fentanyl. We have the trade name pointed out here as well, which is Abstral. The manufacturer is Galena. The amount is the amount of the medication that is supplied in the package. So in this case, we have 32 sublingual tablets. So there are 32 tablets in this particular package. Then we have the strength. This is a very important thing that you will need to find on a drug label. So for each of the tablets, each tablet contains 100 micrograms of fentanyl. And then we have the route, which in this case is sublingual or under the tongue. We have the form, which is a tablet. The national drug code number is pointed out over here. You won't need to know that for doing dose calculation problems, but it's just a way for the FDA to identify this medication.

The expiration date will be over here. It's actually not here in this particular example, but normally you will find it here on the end. And then we have storage instructions pointed out here. We have contraindications pointed out. So these are reasons why the patient should not take this medication. And then we have directions, which will be important to find as well, particularly when you are doing reconstitution problems. So in this particular example, the directions are for sublingual administration, do not chew or swallow the tablet whole, but when we're looking at a medication that needs to be reconstituted, you may have instructions such as add 9 milliliters of sterile water to create a concentration of X number of milligrams over X number of milliliters. And that's going to be important for you to find and possibly use in your dose calculation problem.