What every emergency nurse needs to know about aspirin

As the most commonly recommended medication in the world, aspirin is a medication with which emergency nurses are intimately familiar. Although this medication has been used for more than a century, health-care researchers are discovering new information about the utility of aspirin every year. Within this paper, we provide a review of recent findings related to the use of aspirin in the Emergency Department. In particular, we focus on understanding the pharmacokinetics of the medication as several drugs introduced in the past decade, interact with aspirin and create side effects harmful to patients. As well, we highlight current research around optimal dosage and other issues related to aspirin administration. This review is timely as several issues have arisen in the literature, in relation to the effectiveness of aspirin as an anti-platelet agent.