Medication math help

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Good afternoon,

I am a NH nurse student on my second year to get my BSN. I am now heading into fundamentals and clinical. My school told us we have three chances to get an 90% on med math exam if we fail three times we fail the whole class. I am very nervous I am horrible at math. I was wondering how med math us done and some tips? anything ans any advice helps and is appreciated! I want to pass this ezam and feel confident, we can't give out any meds also till we pass. They have not taught us any formulas or anything so I have no idea what med math is like or its difficulty level! Thank you all for your help!!!

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Welcome to AN! You may find this thread helpful to find some tips and resources for nursing math: Student Resources: Nursing Math.

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Med math is pretty basic math.

I can't speak for what everyone has learned or was required to learn, but I took a class on it last year and am using the same book in a different program.

We started off by learning Roman numerals, fractions (adding, multiplying, dividing, subtracting), decimals, and percentages.

We learned ratio and proportion; solving for x (ie if 25 mg was ordered and you have 5 mg per tablets available, how many tablets will you need to give?). We learned a few different ways of solving such as means and extremes, dimensional analysis, desired/have.

We learned how to read syringes and what type of syringe was more appropriate and when. We learned about the 6 rights of medication, routes of medication, and types of medications and their differences (capsules, caplets, tablets, extended release, etc).

We learned how to convert from milligrams, grams, kilograms, etc. We also had to know other conversions such as pounds to kilograms, oz to cups, etc. We had to know abbreviations such as prn and po, etc and know which abbreviations are no longer used.

We learned calculating pediatric dosage calculations, safe ranges, insulin, heparin, suspensions, reading medication labels, etc.

So the math is pretty basic and you may be learning a lot more than just the math part and learn things more specifically in calculating dosages. I'm assuming that this is pretty standard as far as what many/most learn with medication math, but this is what we learned and are currently learning.

If you have issues with math, definitely seek out tutoring in the beginning.

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Few things when it comes to med math: know your conversions, how to go from grams to milligrams to micrograms, same with any other metric unit. Know your conversions for pounds to kilograms and grams, inches to centimeters, how many mL in a teaspoon, tablespoon and ounce. Also if you are not familiar with dimensional analysis get familiar with setting up your problems this way, Kahn academy has a good video that explains the concept and you can find others on YouTube. Knowing how to set up med math problems using dimensional analysis will make things easier. If you haven't already start practicing doing problems, there are several good books available and plenty of practice problems you can find on the web. The more you practice now, the better your confidence will be when you do your test.

Some problems are going to have distractors in them. Information that is not necessary to find the answer you are looking for, again practice is going to be your friend. If you come across a certain problem that you are having trouble with you can always ask for help here, but make sure that you provide the work that you have already done to try and solve the problem.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.

I agree with the other responses. Nursing math is not that difficult. I love the dimensional analysis method. It almost 100% eliminates the chance for errors.

I like nursing math becuz it makes sense. It's concrete.

Like the OP said, just memorize some basic conversions and you'll be fine!!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Oncology.

Dimensional Analysis rocks. It's an (almost) foolproof way to include conversions and other variables all in the same math problem. Look into the book, "Dimensional Analysis for Meds". Also there are some clues you can memorize to help determine whether or not the result makes sense. For example, IM injections are usually going to be 3mL or less, and Heparin is always calculated to the hundredths. I understand the stress because my big Dimensional Analysis test is coming up this week and if we don't get a 90, we are removed from the entire program.

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Thank you everyone!! I got a lot of good ideas and have an idea for what to study and learn! I will look up dimensional analysis and get studing. Some things seem so difficult and confusing but I am just starting out so I know I will get taught and learn harder things like IV and pedi meds, but first I need to learn basics and then I will dive in to learn the more in depth nursing medications! Thank u all for your time and input!!

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Here. Watch this:

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