math keeping students from graduating

What kind of math are they teaching that you think you will "never use"? All the math I learned in my Pharmacology course is used almost on a daily basis.

I was going to ask the same question.

I use math daily in school, and in my preceptorship, and I expect I'll do the same as a staff nurse. Passing dosage and calculations questions is vital to your success as a nurse. I'm sorry that you feel that not enough teaching was attributed to math, but if you were struggling, there are any number of resources available to you, both in the bookstores and online. One of the best is Math for Meds, by Curren.

I cannot emphasize enough that nurses do use math, and calculating dosages is a skill that requires lots of practice.

I wish you the best of luck and much success.

If I were having that much trouble with math I would take one of the tests over to a math counselor for review and ask what remedial math course they would recommend and then take that remedial class. Because I took the math sequence a few years ago from pre-algebra to trig I often tell students that Pre-Algebra (or 8th grade math) is pretty much the level of math you need to work med calc problems. Med calc are word problems. When I took pre-algebra the course included how to answer word problems. The difference between nursing problems and math word problems is the nursing jargon that is used. The last Beginning Algebra instructor used to constantly tell us students to "draw a picture" when we had a word problem. You can actually do that with many of the drug problems. Many of them are so reality based it isn't funny. And, unlike algebra, they go in one direction--up and increase in value, usually. You will almost never get negative answers on drug calculation problems. I can't tell you how many times at work a nurse would do a calculation, draw something up in a syringe and say, "this can't be right" because she could see it wasn't right. Her mind "drew a picture".