Drug Calculations

Nurses General Nursing

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I'm starting 2nd sem. in 2 weeks and we are suppose to have worked on our drug calculations module before we start school and I am having a hard time because there must be some formula's that I don't know about somewhere. For example how to convert mg's to gr, ml to oz, m to ml etc..... I tried to look it up on the net but I got reference to a lot of books I can go buy. Should I buy a book? What did some of you do?

Any help greatly appreciated!!! Thanks in advance..

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Specializes in CCU (Coronary Care); Clinical Research.

If you have a barnes and noble they usually have a nursing section with books titles drug calculations. I think that the "incredibly easy..." books have one too. If you go to amazon.com, they also probably have books. Just type in drug calculations for nurses or something near that. Good luck.

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Specializes in NICU.

There is one book in particular that might be of great help to you- for us it was a required purchase for our Pharm class.

It's called MedMath (here's a link so you can see it: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0781710286/qid=1060127843/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-6065744-6012022?v=glance&s=books )

If your school doesn't require another book (there is another good one called "Math for Meds" that has new versions available), you can get a used copy from Amazon or somewhere that sells used books for about five bucks. It's definitely worth the money, makes the math really simple, and includes all the conversions you'll ever need along with your formulas, etc. I love this book, I kept it after nursing school, and I still use it today to go over stuff that I might forget.

As far as the meantime goes, most of it is just memorization. Here's a site that you can look at that has basic conversions listed: http://www.nurse-center.com/studentnurse/nur11.html .

Converting within the metric system is usually pretty easy- for instance, there are 1000 mg in 1 g. There are 1000 g in 1 kg. The same goes for ml. There are 1000 ml in one L. There are 1000 L in one KL. To convert these, you simply move the decimal points over- here's an example.

If you need to convert 1.724 g into mg, you move the decimal place over three spaces to the right (you go to the right three spaces because you are essentially multiplying 1.724 by 1000; each gram has 1000 milligrams in it- does that make sense?). So, your answer would be 1724 mg in 1.724 grams.

This is hard to explain in a post! Check out the links and let us know if you need more help. :D

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

check out the "Math for Nurses" It was more helpful for my drug doseage class than the text book was.

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