Nurses use math to administer medications.
A nurse must be able to take a doctor's written prescription and translate that to an actual dosage given to a patient. For example, you may be given a prescription that reads "6mg/kg/min" or "60-120 mcg/kg/hour," and you'll have to convert those orders before administering oral or IV medications. To be successful at nursing math, you should be familiar with unit conversions (for example, metric to household or apothecary to metric), percentages, ratios and proportions.
Instructions
Medications
1. Identify the calculation you need to make. For example, you might have an order for 275 mg of a certain medicine, but the tablets only come in a 100 mg dosage. To figure out how many tablets you need, use a proportion:
100 mg / 1 tablet = 275 / T tablets.
2. Solve the equation you identified in Step 1. For example, to solve 100 mg / 1 tablet = 275 / T tablets you need to cross multiply: 100 x T = 1 x 275
Using algebra, the answer is:
T = 1 x 275/100 = 275 / 100 = 2.75 tablets.
3. Administer the amount of medication you identified in Step 2 to the patient. In the above example, you would take an order for 275 mg of medicine and administer 2.75 tablets to a patient.
IV Flow Rates
4. Identify the administrative set, volume and time from the medication order. For example, the order might be for 250 ml of a certain drug, with an administrative set of 15 gtts/ml and a time of 100 minutes. The medication will be labeled with the administrative set.
5. Insert the numbers you identified in Step 1 into the following equation: Flow rate = Volume (administrative set) / Time.
In the above example, the equation would be:
Flow rate = 250 ml x 15 gtts/ml / 100 minutes.
6. Solve the equation from Step 2. In the above example, the flow rate would be 38 gtts/min.
7. Administer the amount of medication you identified in Step 3 to the patient. In the above example, you would administer a flow rate of 38 gtts/min to a patient.
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