Math IV Question - Please help.

[thegirls]

Hello, Sorry if this is not the way to post/ask a question. I am stuck on this question and I seem not to be able to process this IV problem. I have always had problems with math and my book does not have examples of this type and I keep searching on the web, but I am missing something. 

"Medication 1gm IV is given every 24 hours as ordered. The medication comes in 1gm/50ml bag. You are to infuse over 4 hours. How many ml per hr will you administer?"

THanks, 

[Claralee]

I don't believe we are supposed to give answers if this is your school work.

So think about how much you have to give in total (in mL's) for that 1gm of medication. Then you are given how many hours you have to infuse that over. So work our the hourly rate (ml/hr) by dividing the total number of mL's you need to give by the number of hours (literally ml/hr).

[thegirls]

Not my homework.

[thegirls]

practicing med math IV problems..

[chare]

6 hours ago, thegirls said:

practicing med math IV problems..

Homework, or not.  Why don't you start by showing us what you have done to work this on your own.  Your doing so best helps us to understand where you're having problems.

If you haven't visited this post yet...

... you might find the attached documents helpful.

Best wishes.

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

The first thing to do is read the last sentence. “How many ml/hr?” Then think about what you need to know to figure that out.

You have the number of ml to give (50) and the number of hours to give it over (4). Any other information in the question (the q24 hrs, the date, the name of the medication, whether it’s Thursday or Friday, the color of the vial lid….) is superfluous and designed to do precisely what it has done: confuse you. It wants to weed out the people who have a hard time knowing THE BIG CONCEPT in any clinical question: What’s important here? 
What’s important? How much fluid there is (50 cc) and how long you have to let it run (4hrs). Now can you figure it out?

Another way I’ve found helpful is to change the question using something that’s not scary. Instead of an IV drug and mg and hours, think ….yummy cookies. You have fifty yummy cookies and you don’t want to gobble them down all at once, so you decide to make them last by dividing them into dessert for four lunches. How many cookies do you put in each lunch bag? 
 

See how that works? What’s important here?