What Causes Low Sodium? Hyponatremia Workup

I saw a meme recently that compared hyponatremia to folding a fitted sheet— you can watch a million videos on how to do it, but in the end you'll probably just crumple it up and hope you never have to deal with it again. 🤯Luckily in primary care low sodium is easier to deal with outpatient, and doesn't have to be super complicated. In this episode, I talk about low sodium, which is one of the top abnormal labs in primary care.Hyponatremia involves understanding kidney function, but I've broken it down into the simplest, clearest, most digestible way to give you the most helpful insight to take into your practice. I'll bring you through the step-by-step process to implement for the vast majority of patients you'll see, and if you need to go down the rabbit hole of workup further, you'll have the tools to do so!You'll learn:How to know when your patient needs to go to the ER, and when you can work them up outpatientThe simplest way to remember low sodiumThe #1 lab you should always think of when you see low sodiumHow to know if your patient needs IV fluid (or if that'd be the worst possible thing to do for them)Read the blog post here.Want more lab goodies? Check out the Lab Interpretation Crash Course for Nurse Practitioners Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.