Worried about being bad at math!

Only about a million nurses could have written your post. Honest it is a frequent joke among nurses working many years in bedside nursing about being bad at math.

I hate math and am not good at it. But I didn't struggle in prerequisites or nursing school. Basic math is learnable. The books are designed for students to learn and succeed. I can study and pass dividing fractions, unfortunately a week after the quiz forget how to do it! The same with metric system conversions.

The drug calculations in real nursing life are not crazy making. No drug, no drug manufacture, no doctor is going to have crazy "give 3/6 milligram of a 197 milligram vial"!

It is kind of basic. Once you can hold, see, and play with a syringe (without the needle) it will make sense. It's labeled 100 milligrams in a 1 milimeter syringe, give 50 milligrams. You give half what's in the syringe, or .5 millimeters. Or a scored tablet (one designed to be easily split in half) is 500 milligrams, give 725 milligrams. And I hate the metric system more than I hate basic math!

Honestly as I type this I'm like....wow that sounds confusing, but swear to God you will get it!

There are many posts on math anxiety, nurses who are bad a basic math, etc. Enter that in the search box at the top of Allnurses.

Just because you are 'bad at math' NOW does not make it a permanent condition. But that kind of self-talk is really hard to overcome. How about "I am not great at math RIGHT NOW but will take steps to improve and get better at it."? And then, do just that.

A motivational speaker at my son's 5th grade graduation (middle school is 6th-8th grade here) did this excercise with the kids: he passed out paper and pencils and had them write down a piece of negative self-talk. Then they crumpled up the paper and threw the wads onto the stage.

This speaker once thought himself to be bad at sports. He is now a champion triathlete.

The most complex nursing math gets is single-variable algebra. If you have a prior degree, heck if you were able to gain acceptance into an institute of higher learning, I wholeheartedly believe that you can learn the math required to be a nurse.

I have ADHD & a math disability. Always tested 2 to 3 grades below my actual level of learning. Until I had a remedial math professor about 6 years ago (who taught advanced calculus and trigonometry!) who made the lightbulb go off.

Am I amazing at math or mental math? Not really. Can I do 80% than I used to be able to, and teach it to someone else? Yes.

Baby steps.

Nursing math isn't difficult; learn the basic math and you'll be ok.

I have taught this subject to pharmacy technician students and written a book on the subject. You can do all unit conversions, dosage problems, iv drip problems, mEq problems the same easy way without any formulas. You can PM me if you have questions. Also, you might want to look at my comments.

Brad Wojcik, PharmD