 Welcome to nursing school explain on this video on pharmacokinetics or in other words how a medication travels through the body or what the body does with different medications and there are four steps of pharmacokinetics and kinetics just think about movements or kinetic energy and pharmacokinetics meaning drugs moving through the body. So the four steps are number one absorption which this video will focus on. After we absorb the medicine it gets distributed, metabolized and excreted but I have separate videos about these other steps. So first of all for absorption it depends on the route of administration and how long it takes from administering the medication for it to reach the bloodstream and the effects depends on the rate, the amount and the route of administration. When we talk about the route of administration for medications we always have to distinguish whether it goes through the GI tract or it does not go through the GI tract. So medications that are absorbed through the GI tract are referred to as enteral medications think about enteric bacteria back from your microbiology classes and then parenteral which is all other methods of administration besides the GI tract. So for enteral medications one of the most common ones used is PO so by mouth and that depends on several factor the way that the medication is absorbed depends on different factors. So first of all the ability of the GI tract to absorb so any underlying disorders the pH of the stomach remember that it's an acidic environment and so some medications might be absorbed better in an acidic versus an alkaline environment. The food that's present that's why some medications are taken with food and some are better taken without food. Other medications because some might interact with each other in the stomach and they might not be able to permit the second medication to be absorbed as much as we would like it to be available in the body and then also if it's a liquid liquid versus a solid medication so think about any kind of liquid Tylenol for example versus a pill liquid medication is going to be absorbed faster than a pill or a capsule because it doesn't have to be broken down it's readily available. The other enteral medication administration is sublingual or buccal so anything that pertains to the oral mucosa and that absorbs pretty quickly because there's a lot of vascularity in our oral cavity and so medications are absorbed pretty quickly buccal medications I was trying to think of an example unfortunately I couldn't come up with one but sublingual anything from like zoophen or nitroglycerin are used pretty pretty frequently and then there is also the GI system so it can be administered PR per rectum and then per vagina it's not necessarily the GI system but it's also another route besides the other ones and those are those administration routes are reserved for patients who cannot or should not swallow so think about somebody who's actively seizing who might not be able to establish an IV but we want to get some anti-seizure medication on board or a benzodiazepine to halt the seizure so a rectus repository might be indicated and then the other reason patients that shouldn't swallow are maybe somebody who has had a stroke or some sort of head injury that has impaired swallowing so we wouldn't want to give them anything by mouth because that could you know lead to complications of aspiration and so forth and then the other round so par rentarol everything but the GI system we can give medications by the route of inhalation it depends however on the patient's inspiratory effort how deep of a breath are they able to take and how much of the drug are they able to take in through their lungs but it's quickly absorbed through the alveoli so that's a very nice alternative route for some emergency medication specifically and then intradermal or topical medications so anything that pertains to the skin is going to be absorbed a little bit slower primarily topical and intradermal medications have local effects but they might also be absorbed into the systemic circulation and have some some minor or lesser to a lesser degree systemic effects then subcutaneous or intramuscular depends on the medication solubility in water because our bodies consist to the majority of water and so the drug's ability to dissolve in water will depend on how much of it gets absorbed and how quickly so highly soluble medications take about 10 to 30 minutes to absorb where poorly soluble medications take minutes sometimes even hours to be absorbed and then the last but not least IV intravenous route of administration has immediate effects there are no barriers to absorption at all it hits the bloodstream as soon as we push that medication and it is available right away to take the whatever desired effect so thank you for watching this video on pharmacokinetics and the absorption of medications i'll put the link in the description of the video below that refers to the other three steps of pharmacokinetics so you can put all the puzzle pieces together thanks for watching nursing school explain see you soon