Medical Math Question

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I haven't started math in Pharm yet, but our teacher said there are several ways to figure dosages in medicine and she will let us use the method that works best for us. She has been trying Dimensional Analysis herself for a little while and she says she likes it. Do you all think it would work well for someone who is okay at math until it comes to Algebra? I am an older student and never took Algebra in H.S.( my adviser told me I didn't need it for college!). I took Developmental classes in college 2 years ago to get to take my college math and barely passed each level with a C. I took Probability and Statistics as my college level math and did much better. So, based on this info do you all think I should try D.A.?

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I haven't started math in Pharm yet, but our teacher said there are several ways to figure dosages in medicine and she will let us use the method that works best for us. She has been trying Dimensional Analysis herself for a little while and she says she likes it. Do you all think it would work well for someone who is okay at math until it comes to Algebra? I am an older student and never took Algebra in H.S.( my adviser told me I didn't need it for college!). I took Developmental classes in college 2 years ago to get to take my college math and barely passed each level with a C. I took Probability and Statistics as my college level math and did much better. So, based on this info do you all think I should try D.A.?

Yes, I do. I think dimensional analysis is a very useful skill for a variety of problem types. Once it's explained to you and you work a few problems, you shouldn't have any trouble with it.

Look for some of Daytonite's reply posts on the topic. She covers it very well.

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Now, I think opposite of the above poster. I'm an older but a decent math student. For me it was easier to just learn the formulas such as desired dose/dose on hand X mL ( if necessary.) Same with IV drip rates. When our teacher tried to show how to do them using DA, it just confused me.

By the way, I've never missed a computation problem on any of my tests doing it this way.

Dixie

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

dimensional analysis, in most cases, only requires that you understand basic math up to the 8th grade. about as complicated as it gets is knowing how to do multiplication and division with fractions. you also need to know the order of operations if you happen to end up with a string of terms that is mixed as to subtraction, addition, multiplication and division. this is all basic 8th grade math. about the only algebra i've ever had to use in drug calculations has been with equivalency ratios where you are trying to find "x" in a problem like 1/2 = x/10. this simplifies to 2x = 10, or x = 5. if you can do that kind of calculation, you should be ok. there are many web sites where this information can be obtained for free to refresh your memory on this if you are rusty at it. the drug problems are set up according to one basic formula that you just plug information into from the information in the problem and then begin doing the math calculation.

you can see examples of how dimensional analysis is used to answer drug problems on this thread:

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