How much math is involved in nursing school?

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I am curious about how much math is involved in nursing school? Is it a little or a lot? And what classes do you typically have that incorporate medical math?? what is the general level of difficulty?

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Great question, I am wondering the same thing. I'm awful about math and I think I'm most nervous for that aspect. :confused:

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The math is very simple. +, -, *, /

People get tripped up on it because they don't have basic, fundamental math skills. You should be able to figure out what percentage of one thing is within another. You should be able to add 2 things together and correctly round. You should understand the metric system and be able to move things from grams to milligrams, etc.

You use math whenever you are preparing and administering medication or IV fluid. There are some other uses, but that's the main one.

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I'm in a BSN program, and so far math is mainly focused on med calculations in pharmacology. We spent half a semester learning how to do drug calculations which involves calculating IV drip rates, safe dosages, conversions, etc.

I am historically TERRIBLE at math, but so far nursing-related math has been fun and easy! If you can cross multiply, you can do this math. It involves learning the formulas and just figuring out what you are looking for and cross-multiplying everything to end up with your answer (they call it dimensional analysis). A lot of questions give you distractors which are numbers that you don't even need to use in the problem. But if you can think through the problem, you'll be fine. I had a pretty good teacher so I think that helped a lot too.

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well, I have already bought a medical math book even though I am not in the program. i want to be well prepared before I even start. so far everything seems pretty easy except for this one problem

An IV of 500mL is infusing at 28gtt/min. It was to complete in 3hr but after 1 1/2 hr, only 175ml have infused. Recalculate the gtt/min rate to complete the infusion on schedule. Set calibration is 10gtt/mL

time remaining: 3hr - 1.5hr=1.5hr

Volume remaining: 500 mL - 175 mL =325mL

325mL/1.5hr=216.6 = 217mL/hr

set calibration is 10 gtt/mL

217/6 (division factor)= 36.1 = 36gtt/min (WHERE DID THEY GET THE 6 FROM?? I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW TO FIND THE DIVISION FACTOR IN THESE TYPE OF PROBLEMS)

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The 6 in this problem is coming from the fact that you are looking for gtt/min. To get to that, you have to multiply the mL/hr by the calibration rate and divide by 60 to get your minutes. But since the calibration is 10, they simplified it and just went straight to divide by 6 by chopping off an extra zero. I don't know if I'm explaining that very well. This is the formula I use for those problems:

Amount of solution x gtt/ml

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hours x 60 (minutes per hour)

So in this problem, you take 325 ml x 10 and divide that by minutes, which would be 90. =36.1 gtt/min

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Which one did you buy?

I'm starting an ABSN in Jan. and ended up buying "Dosage calculations made incredibly easy" so I can learn from the very basics and up. A lot of the math in the book looks very similar to math that we used in chem. If it is, I don't think it should be too bad (hopefully).

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The 6 in this problem is coming from the fact that you are looking for gtt/min. To get to that, you have to multiply the mL/hr by the calibration rate and divide by 60 to get your minutes. But since the calibration is 10, they simplified it and just went straight to divide by 6 by chopping off an extra zero. I don't know if I'm explaining that very well. This is the formula I use for those problems:

Amount of solution x gtt/ml

---------------------------------

hours x 60 (minutes per hour)

So in this problem, you take 325 ml x 10 and divide that by minutes, which would be 90. =36.1 gtt/min

thank you so much. the book doesnt even explain it. I was wondering where that 6 came from for the longest.

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Hi there...I am a mom returning to school to get my nursing degree. Not sure what program to get into yet in Dallas metroplex. I am wondering if anyone has taken the "entrance assessment" given at any school as part of admissions criteria..? Anyway, if you have taken this exam...what did it consist of and please tell me about the math...thanks:)

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Which one did you buy?

I'm starting an ABSN in Jan. and ended up buying "Dosage calculations made incredibly easy" so I can learn from the very basics and up. A lot of the math in the book looks very similar to math that we used in chem. If it is, I don't think it should be too bad (hopefully).

I bought Math for Meds by Anna M Curren online. It's a pretty good book. But the nursing program that I applied to doesn't use this book so when I get some money I will buy theirs in advance.

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I bought Math for Meds by Anna M Curren online. It's a pretty good book. But the nursing program that I applied to doesn't use this book so when I get some money I will buy theirs in advance.

I'm looking for any and all good books to help me through :)

We have one thats required that seems decent, "clinical calculations made easy."

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We used Calculate with Confidence and I thought it was great.

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