RN program acceptance letter & drug dosage calculation questions

[pmabraham]

Good day:

I received my RN program acceptance letter today for starting clinicals in January 2015 with an anticipated graduation date in December 2016. Our nursing school requires that one passes a drug calculation exam prior to the start of every semester with a 100%.

The letter stated to study specific chapters in "Calculating with Confidence" 6th edition. For those of you who have the 5th and 6th edition or have already done comparisons, is there much of a change between the 5th and 6th edition? Would using the 5th edition to study be risky?

Are there any websites than dosagehelp.com (whcih I do know about and enjoy) that you would recommend for getting practice and learning dosage calculations?

For those of you who have to take regular (at least once a semester) drug calculation exams, what do you do to prepare yourself to do well on the exams?

Thank you!

[Jayjormom]

Congrats on your acceptance. There is also testandcalc.com. I have been searching for useful dosage calculation sites and found quite a few. Google drug dosage calculations and many sites pop up. Some have practice exams from different nursing schools in PDF that u can print out. I don't have any other advice for you. I don't start school til aug. I will say GOOD LUCK to you. I wish you the absolute best!!!

[pmabraham, BSN, RN]

Good day, Jayjormom:

Thank you for letting me know about that site and concerning searching for other sites / practice sets.

[auralae]

One of our instructors gave us a practice set of questions during first semester. I pull it out a week before we have to go back for a "skills fair" & math exam to study. It has always helped me pass each time.

[rls927]

We have this as well.

At our orientation, they opened up multiple (10 I believe) practice tests for us, and although we had to score a 100% on the dosage exam, you were allowed multiple attempts.

I was really worried- because I don't really like math, at all (and haven't had a math course in quite some time) but once you know the basic conversions you're fine. I honestly think the practice problems were much harder then our dosage exam.

I scored 100% the first time, but one piece of advice that almost tripped me up- READ the entire question over slowly. Often they will put other information in there that isn't necessary (just to try to trip you up)

[thehumbleRN]

For any kind of Kaplan, calculation, NCLEX style questions, go to Google and type in what you are looking for:

NCLEX calculations

NCLEX cardiology

NCLEX pharmacology

and a bunch of exam questions are available. You will find this very helpful. I've been an RN since Feb and it served me well.