Need some help with drip rate calculations!

I'm usually pretty good at dosage calculations, but I need some help with these:

One is: The physician orders Pronestyl at 1 mg/min. The solution available is 1 gm Pronestyl in 500 ml D5W. At what rate should the IV run if the drip factor is 60 gtts/ml?

The other one is: The physician orders Heparin at 1200 units/hr. The solution available is Heparin 25,000 units in 500 ml D5W. How many ml/hr should the IV run?

Thanks for any tips!

1000/500 : 1/x =

and then multiply by 60

25000/500 : 1200/x =

Thank you!

this site is a great resource... http://www.dosagehelp.com/

I'm not in nursing school, yet. But, I feel like this, as in this question are the types of things that are going to hold me back. This looks so hard :-/ I'll learn this stuff, right?

I'm usually pretty good at dosage calculations, but I need some help with these:

One is: The physician orders Pronestyl at 1 mg/min. The solution available is 1 gm Pronestyl in 500 ml D5W. At what rate should the IV run if the drip factor is 60 gtts/ml?

The other one is: The physician orders Heparin at 1200 units/hr. The solution available is Heparin 25,000 units in 500 ml D5W. How many ml/hr should the IV run?

Thanks for any tips!

Keep in mind that these questions have information that is irrelevant to what they are asking.

1. The question asks for the rate of the IV. Now I was under the impression that the answer should be in ml/min. If that is the case, the drip factor is irrelevant. What I use is the ratio method - just makes a lot more sense to me than learning some formulas.

So, if the solution you have on hand is 1gm/500ml how many ml a minute do you need to obtain the 1mg of the drug that is ordered? So, just do this.

1,000mg (same as 1gm) / 500ml = 1mg / (x)ml ; then cross multiply and you end up with 0.5 ml/min. If you want the rate in gtts, then its 30 gtts/ml since there are 60 drops per ml, 0.5 of it is 30.

2. Similar principle here. What is available is 25,000units/500ml. You want 1200 units administered an hour. So just use a ratio. 25,000u/500ml = 1200u/(x) ml ; you get 24. So its 24 ml/hr of this solution for your patient to get the 1200u/hr prescribed. If you want to make sure this makes sense, just work backwards.

If there are 25,000 units in 500ml, how many units are there in 1ml? 25,000 divided by 500 = 50 units/ml. So if you're administering 24 ml (the answer) how much drug will they get? So if the solution has 50u per ml, multiply that by 24 ml and you get 1200 units.