Math, My Weakness

LPN_2005/RN_10 · Dec 8, 2009

Does your college offer tutors? Finding a great tutor who can simplify the steps will be most beneficial to you. If there's a tutoring center, explain your situation and the staff will recommend the best tutor for you. Good luck!

nrsman1 · Dec 8, 2009

I understand completley!!! it should make you feel better to know that I failed basic math in middle school and received a D in algebra. Even in college I struggled with even the most basic math. But for some reason when I took my math for meds class; knowing that this is what I really NEEDED to know it finally clicked. and guess what I am an LPN, who gives meds and does math on a daily basis. and just finished RN school. So the point is when you do it over and over and over. it WILL just click I promise.

AugustRain · Dec 8, 2009

You sound just like me. I failed math once in high school. Then one more time in college. No matter how much I thought I understood it while someone was walking me through the process, when I was left to do the problems on my own, it was like I'd never seen numbers before. Classes felt like they were being taught in a foregin language.

When I decided to go back to school for nursing, I really thought math might be the thing that kept me from passing. So I got a tutor and Calculate with Confidence, and started from scratch. Like, reviewing fractions and decimals. I got over the embarrassment of asking completely obvious questions. I finally figured out that I just saw things differently, and the standard methods of presenting the material didn't work for me. Things started to click for me. I was able to understand why problems were worked out in certain ways. I can do dosage calcs with no problem, and even explain them to other people.

I got a B in stats and passed every dosage calc test with flying colors, including my pre-employment one. It may take a little more time to check my work and grab a calculator, but it's worth it for accuracy.

It's great that you're addressing your difficulty with math, and I'm sure you'll be successful at overcoming it. If there's any info I can share, let me know & I'm happy to help! Good luck!

KungFuFtr · Dec 8, 2009

I wasn't the best in math during high school and during my first round of college. Eventually, I kicked major but in math. I got a tutor that I saw for 45 min twice a week.

Math is all about practice and repetition. You can't do one problem and say to yourself (I got one correct...I know how to do this). No, you must do your assigned homework over and over (my math teachers in college only graded tests and didn't collect homework), rinse and repeat. The advice I received was to work on math problems for 1 hour a day, everyday. It made things easier for myself when I thought of the homework as puzzles.

Work on your math homework. If a problem is difficult, circle the question in your book and show your tutor.

PinkaRN · Dec 8, 2009

I was very bad in math also. I studied hard and became good at it. I used remembering steps. Take your time and do one step at a time. Hope this helps.

DoGoodThenGo · Dec 8, 2009

Welcome to my world! *LOL*

Hated math in high school and only completed algebra (just), because it was required for a Regents diploma. After that swore off math (or so I thought), however life had other plans.

In order to get through two college math courses had to hire a tutor, and managed to eek out a "B" in each class. However years of being backing away from math finally pushed me to confront my fear and deal with the real.

Math is pretty straight forward, once one knows one's times tables, order of operations, and basic sums and such, whichi is all one needs to know for Med Dose Calc.

Program I attended in the 1980's did not allow students to use caculators, and we had to use formulas provided by our instructors, and all work had to be shown. There wasn't any of this "ratio to proportion" or whatever it's called either. We also had to memorize and be able to recall (again, nothing would be provided for exams), all and sundry metric and pharm conversions (drams, gtts, teaspoons, etc). For person who dreaded long division, doing "drip rate" problems struck fear in my heart.

Things are much more relaxed these days in both nursing programs, and in clinical/hospital settings. Yes, one needs to know formulas and how to arrive at correct answers, but computer help is not only allowed but provided (caculators, pumps, etc). However as a licensed RN you will be and are expected to know how to caculate meds, even when no such help is provided. You will most likely encounter pharm/dosage caculations on the NCLEX, and will certianly have to take pharm exams when applying for any nursing job. Hospitals vary in what they consider passing, but most want near or 100%

My advice is to simply face your fear and either sit down with a good math review book, and or hire a tutor. The important thing is to relax and open your mind. Working one's self into a state often impedes any sort of learning.

Basic math has not change in thousands of years, and isn't going anyplace in the near future. *LOL* Once you have grasped how to do things, the rest will flow into place quite easily. As other posters have stated, practice, practice, practice. The more and often one does math problems the eaiser they become and soon the brain just "takes over" so things become second nature. Proof of this can be seen with persons over say 50 or 60 years of age who went to school when math was droned into student's heads, can often run through math problems in their heads. Have seen an 80 year old man behind me in a grocery check out line make change in his head faster than the clerk not nearly 1/4 his age. Worse the later had the benefit of paper and pencil and a caculator, and still couldn't get the proper answer.

Best of luck,

DGTG

caliotter3 · Dec 8, 2009

One school I attended broke down the basic algebra course into halves and thirds for those who wanted to take it at a slower pace. It was basically in a math lab format. You went in and got your assignments and did your work in the classroom. The teacher was there to help all the students. Everyone worked at their own pace. This, combined with a math tutor, and/or going to the math lab on your own time, would certainly help anyone get through their math course(s). If your school doesn't have this type of setup, then I would suggest you follow the advice given here, work on math everyday and seek the help of a tutor. Most schools have a math lab where you can get help from a tutor without having to pay extra. Good luck.

~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN · Dec 8, 2009

Getting a tutor would probably help. Math in JHS was a strong suit of mine. I didn't really have much of it in HS and when I went to college math was the only part on the entrance testing I required taking a class. I struggled through it and was dreading my Dosage and Calculation class. She has us doing a lot outside of just dosage and calculations. I am guessing to fill class time since it's a 3 credit class. But she told us, anyone that is passing her class will be able to pass the Dosage and Calc test that we have to score 100% on.

I have found that although I struggle with many aspects of math, the dosage and calculations has been a breeze, I think dimensional analysis might be my favorite type of math. Took my first try on the exam yesterday and passed it with the 100%. Since that is the part that is heavy with nursing hopefully you can work through that stuff, for sure look into a tutor, once it clicks just keep working problems all the time so you don't forget how to do it.

DoGoodThenGo · Dec 8, 2009

While the more advanced levels of algebra can be scary, the most required of one for nursing math is not much beyond 9th grade level. Mainly order of operations, how to read, set up and solve word/equation problems (solve for "X"), and how to plug in one's answer to "check", if it tis correct. Now if one is going into research, managment some other areas of nursing away from the floors, statistics and finite math may come into play, but we're not on that right now.

In my experience what trips up many about nurisng math, is having to solve word problems, which basically is what MD drug orders are. Instead of "Jane leaves New York at 1PM, traveling on a jet plane that uses 400 gallons per hour of fuel, and arrives in Japan 24 hours later, how much fuel did the plane use?" or some such. You have; (Ordered) 37 y/o male patient 2 hours post-op, give Morphine Sulphate 10mg IM Q4H prn for pain. (Supplied) Mophine sulfate 1/6 grain per mL. How many milliliters will nurse give for one dose?

As with all math problems, often one will find useless "noise" information included with the problem that is not required to find the proper answer. Your job is to sort out the wheat from the chaff and extract only the information required to solve the problem. Often students get confused and go off on tangents using (or trying to) plug in the useless bits of information and end up with totally way off answers.

It is not at all odd that the same thing one was told often in high school algebra classes, was often repeated in med/dose calc class: "look at the problem and think about what it is asking you to solve".

tlc2u · Dec 9, 2009

i don't know what math is covered in the math course you are taking. but it might help you to know there is only a certain amount of math; that you need to master; to do nursing math -drug dosage calculations. my school required us to take prerequisite math courses that were not very relevant to nursing math- drug dosage.

my advice would be to look at the content of drug dosage calculations to understand what math is really "the need to know". and: learn how to do "dimensional analysis" (don't let the fancy term scare you. once you learn this method it works for most all nursing math.)

we were taught 3 methods for nursing math and could choose which method we preferred.

1. ratio and proportion method (did not work for all problems)

2. formulas method. (i was not good at remembering all the formulas)

3. dimensional analysis (only one wayt to learn and works for most everything)

i began college when my children were in high school. when i took my college entrance test i did not score well in the math as much of that math i had not used since middle school. (converting between fractions, decimals, and percentages etc.) due to my low score the college required that i take several remedial algebra classes, which i did.

in hindsite most of the remedial math i was required to take had "very little" to do with nursing math or drug dosage calculations. in my school our drug dosage was taught in just a few weeks at the beginning of nursing school. it was a requirement to pass this or students would have to drop out and reapply the next semester. each semester several students had to drop due to not understanding the math since school rushed through teaching it.

to me it would have made more sense to teach a full course on drug dosage calcs rather than requiring the remedial math and another full credit math which 85% was unrelated to nursing math.

a year later my son enrolled in the same college. he had just completed high school and high levels of math so felt he did not need to study or prepare for the college entrance math test. he scored poorly as well on the entrance math and college wanted him to take remedial math. i advised him not to and he signed a waiver at the college to opt out of the remedial math courses. he went on to take the college level math for his associates degree and passed the math courses with no problem.

it also helped me to relate the nursing math in the way we would use it as nurses. think of mls to cc's to tsp and tbsp. by using a clear plastic 30ml medicine dosage cup which has these levels printed on the sides. think of 1000 mls to 1 liter as a bag of iv fluid. think of mls and units as the 3 types of syringes nurses use.

http://www.nurseceusonline.com/viewcourse/20-67015.htm

liquid medication will be measured into a dosage cup if it is an oral medication or drawn up into a syringe if it's a medication for an injection with measurements of:

1) units for the insulin syringe

2) mls for the 3ml syringe

3) mls for the 1ml tuberculin syringe.

http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/1145/1173501/dosagecalculations.pdf

short explains all three ways of math

"medication administration made incredibly easy" is a book you might be able to find in your local barnes and noble bookstore. this website has a nice preview of some of the book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=m9d...age&q=&f=false

best of luck

classicdame, MSN, EdD · Dec 9, 2009

I agree that tutoring would be of help so you get feedback as to what you need to improve upon. Also, go to public library for book on the type math you are studying, but look in the junior section. I found that once I grabbed the basic concepts it began to fall in place. Another thing---practice practice practice