Student Resources: Nursing Math

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A new-grad orientee was to give an I.V. heparin drip to one of her patients. She calculated the I.V. rate incorrectly. The orientee asked the charge nurse to counter-check her drug calculation. The charge nurse was too busy to do an independent drug calculation and just looked at the orientee's drug calculation and said something like, "It looks o.k. to me." This was a sentinel event and it was very scary to say the least. I am very thankful that it did not happen in our unit.

I do drug calculations to keep my mind sharp and also not to forget the formulas, but I also quickly log on to a web site that has drug calculations to verify my math. I'm sure in many U.S. hospitals, independent counter-checkings are required for drug calculations of critical medications and also in programming I.V. pumps with critical meds.

At the risk of being repetitive: Just remember to do INDEPENDENT drug calculation and INDEPENDENT counter-check, or do INDEPENDENT programming and INDEPENDENT counter-checking of already programmed I.V. pump for a critical medication, whatever the case may be.

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Thank you so much for those math resources. I am wondering why as a prerequisite to nursing in the state of California that Intermediate Algebra is the requirement. I have been through almost 2 years of math for nursing and not "once" has anything been taught to me regarding calculations of dosages etc.

In some states, the nursing school requirements are specific to nursing and I think this is the answer. When my husband went to get his MBA he took Business Math. Why are nurses not being taught math for nursing exclusively?? My math skills are not so great but taking College Algebra, Trigonometry or Calculus is not going to fix this. Graphing a hyperbola and functions doesn't teach me a thing about IV drips and so on.

State Boards of Nursing need to look in to this and change the curriculum so that we have nurses that are capable to performing these duties accurately.

Thanks Again!

Juneau07 I agree with you 100% !!