Children's nurse-worried about Maths

[Nurseofthefuture.x]

Hello,

I am a current college student in my second year and I am wanting to become a Children's nurse, although I am a little bit worried about how much maths there is included within Children's nursing and what kind of maths do you need to know how to do?

I am not going to give up because maths is a struggle for me though, I am going to keep going and get my maths, so that I can become a Children's nurse.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

Nurseofthefuture.x

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

For future reference, the technical term for "children's nurse" is pediatric nurse.

You will need to know and understand basic algebra, which is involved in many medication calculations. Questions such as, "If your patient has an order for 120mL of Normal Saline per hour, how many 1-liter bags will you use in 24 hours?" and "Your patient is ordered a dose of 80mg SoluMedrol IV. Your stock medication is 125mg in 2mL. How many mL will you administer to give the patient the prescribed dose?" are going to be standard type questions you'll encounter both in practice and in nursing school.

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Are you in the UK? I know they are specialty trained and refer to pediatric nurses as children's nurses and mathematics/math as " maths". There is a UK nursing forum on this site if so for more targeted responses.

[EKRN2014]

I wouldn't worry about the math. Yes, of course, you need to be able to do dosage calculations, especially for Pediatrics. However, my nursing program included a medical math class and made these EASY. Yes, at first they can seem a little overwhelming, but with practice it does become very doable. It really is just basic math-like what you had to do in chemistry. And, also, in my nursing school (and I think in most), you have to pass a math test (dosage calculations), every semester, so you're forced to keep on practicing.

You'll do fine...it just takes practice :)