Innumeracy

Please tell us that you're joking.

42 minutes ago, Davey Do said:

Wrongway pharmacy would dispense two 100mg tabs and have the nurse cut one of them in quarter pieces.

Really.

Davey Do,

Again, you make me laugh out loud!!!!!

Regarding the 125 mg dose, I know you'll be glad to hear a 6 person task force has been created to look into it.

In defense of the nurse in question they may have been trying to keep it in "equal doses" without cutting pills (one of the things beat into our heads in NP school was that if you have patients cut pills or take multiple doses they are unlikely to be compliant and we were marked down on care plans that featured such mechanics when it could be simplified with a different equally effective medicine or dosage form) in which case it could be rather challenging. Also, I was exponentially more adept in calculating in my head during my "early college years" when I was constantly doing this for the algebra, calculus, and nursing med/calc classes that I was taking. At one point in college I could breeze through differential equations and complete 10 step dosage calculation problems in Chemistry with no problems. However, now I would struggle with many of the questions on my BSN dosage calc. quizzes. It's like anything else "use it or lose it" in the same way that it has taken me months of 90 minute workouts to get back to 50 push ups (when I used to be able to do 75), it would take me awhile (if ever) to get the "mental fitness" to do very much dosage calc. by hand. These baseline skills (for a new NP) take up a greater percent of their "cognitive processing power" when they start and as they gain proficiency it tends to be less cognitively taxing.

All you have to do, if you don't know off the top of your head is set up a math problem.

125 mg/x 100 mg/1 tablet =1.25

I am used to taking test to get jobs. Things are different now, if you do take a test you are given the answers or very few math calculation problems. The people that last in the job aren't the math skilled types but rather the, I am willing to take the most bullshaz. When you look at the mar, it tells you how many pills the patient needs to get, all you have to do is cut them. The question is how do you check that what your doing is correct if your math skills suck.

Tangentially related, but I once had a teenage patient who was very particular (on the spectrum) and insisted that each of his 15+ meds be cut up into 1/4s or 1/8s (if we could physically make them that small) before taking the pill fractions one at at time, each with 3-5 minute breaks in between. His morning med pass took nearly 2 hours.

On 7/16/2019 at 4:39 AM, Oldmahubbard said:

Regarding the 125 mg dose, I know you'll be glad to hear a 6 person task force has been created to look into it.

I so wish I could say I am shocked about this but, well, ya know I cant!