Calulating Heparin Drips

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The other nite at work, another nurse had a heparin drip and asked me to do the calculations w/ her. I was terribly embarrassed. Now I got the math right but messed up w/ the decimal point. My co-worker called the house supervisor and they figured it out. But that didn't help me much. After all of this, I realized that I need a refresher on heparin drips. Anyone suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks

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there should be a simple math book you could get to look over. I always asked the pharmacist to check with me. It is very simple here, we use INR protocols, up, down, or stationary depending on results. All gtts are uniform solutions too. Maybe just a talk with the pharmacy will allow you to understand this better.

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Specializes in Neuro/Med-Surg/Oncology.

Pickar has a good workbook for dosage calculations. A lot of them are basic, bit there's also a few chapters of advanced IV calculations. They have examples and several pages of exercises. You could probably get one cheap on half.com or ebay.

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Specializes in Surgical.

We have a nomogram we use to determine the rate change and attached to the nomogram is a simple step by step explanation of the math used. We also have a standardized concentration 50U/ML. The more you do it the easier it will be.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Tele, Vascular, Plastics.

Hello,

I am a student nurse and we went over this in the classroom when we had a a case study. But they took the papers away from us. Now I have nothing to study from. I can not even remember what to do. I would be so embarrassed if I had to do it on a clinical day. Cuz I would have no idea what I was doing. I don't even know why they took the case study away from us, unless they were planning to use it on a future exam.

Can anyone give me an example of calculating a hep drip and i'll see if i can figure it out on my own first...

Thanks so much,

Angie

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Hello,

I am a student nurse and we went over this in the classroom when we had a a case study. But they took the papers away from us. Now I have nothing to study from. I can not even remember what to do. I would be so embarrassed if I had to do it on a clinical day. Cuz I would have no idea what I was doing. I don't even know why they took the case study away from us, unless they were planning to use it on a future exam.

Can anyone give me an example of calculating a hep drip and i'll see if i can figure it out on my own first...

Thanks so much,

Angie

First it will depend on the amount of heparin that your facility uses as standard. Usually, it is either 20,000 units or 25,000 units per 500 ml.

Next step would be to devide the amount of heparin by 500 for the ml per bag. This will give you the mg per ml. Then you just go from there.

Really quite easy.

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