Free Nursing Pharmacology Review Course – Routes of Administration – Section 1.6
Real Life Pharmacology - Pharmacology Education for Health Care Professionals
Eric Christianson, PharmD; Pharmacology Expert and Clinical Pharmacist
4.9 • 773 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
The route of administration can change everything about how a medication works—from how fast it takes effect to how safe and effective it is for a specific patient. For nurses, choosing and administering the correct route is a critical clinical responsibility that directly affects outcomes. In this episode, we’ll explore common routes of administration in nursing pharmacology, including oral, IV, subcutaneous, topical, and inhaled therapies. We’ll discuss when and why certain routes are preferred, common pitfalls to avoid, and how nursing judgment plays a key role in safe medication delivery.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I hope you enjoy this review and find it helpful in your studies. You can get full ad-free access to the Med-Ead-101 |
| 0:08.8 | Nursing Pharmacology Review course at Med-Ead-101.com slash nurse. Med-Ead 101's Nursing Pharmacology Review |
| 0:18.0 | course is built to make meds finally click. |
| 0:21.6 | You'll get nearly 20 hours of ad-free, on-demand video lessons, |
| 0:26.3 | downloadable slides you can study from, |
| 0:28.6 | over 40 cheat sheets and study guides, |
| 0:31.3 | and practice questions to assess what you know. |
| 0:34.9 | Whether you're preparing for exams or building real-world confidence, this |
| 0:39.4 | course is designed by pharmacology experts for nurses. Stop memorizing, start understanding |
| 0:45.8 | pharmacology at meded101.com slash nurse. In this video, I'm going to cover routes of administration for medications. |
| 0:56.8 | All right, so I've listed them all there. Sorry, it got a little bit small. There are some more |
| 1:01.6 | rare ones, too, that I won't go into a ton of detail on, but I'll share those as well. But |
| 1:07.7 | these are the most common that you're going to see in practice. |
| 1:13.5 | All right, let's start with oral, often denoted as PO or by mouth. Oral ingestion, swallowing is the |
| 1:22.6 | most common medication route. It's easy, it's simple. Patients generally know how to do it, you know, |
| 1:30.5 | with exceptions, obviously, very young and very old, may have swallowing difficulties. |
| 1:37.0 | We can have, you know, powders, tablets, capsules, suspension, solutions, syrups, these can all be |
| 1:43.7 | taken orally. |
| 1:46.2 | Plenty of examples to go around here, augment and suspension, that being more of a liquid-type |
| 1:52.1 | formulation, metoprolal, tartrate tablets, duoxetine capsules, and so on and so forth. |
| 1:58.1 | So, again, most common dosage form, |
| 2:03.9 | absorption can occur as early as in the mouth. |
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