If the patient needs additional teaching, take this opportunity to provide it. Take time to taper Steroids suppress adrenal gland function, and the adrenal gland may take 9 months to a year to fully recover after long-term steroid therapy. So before the practitioner withdraws the drug completely, he'll carefully taper the steroid dosage. And abruptly stopping steroid therapy can send the patient into addisonian crisis, a life-threatening emergency. Make sure your patient understands the need to follow the dosage-tapering schedule precisely.
Steroids suppress the body's normal response to stress.
To boost this response during periods of extra stress, the practitioner may need to increase the dosage temporarily or restart the medication for a short time. A general rule is that the time it takes to wean a patient off steroids should equal the time the patient received maximal therapy. Assessing success You'll use your clinical judgment rather than lab test results to evaluate the effectiveness of steroid therapy. When the benefits to the patient outweigh the adverse reactions from the steroid, then the steroid therapy has been successful. And when the patient understands and can cope with the therapy and has minimal adverse reactions from the drug, then your nursing care has been successful too.