Dosage Calculations | Nursing Drug Calculations | Med Math: Everything You Need To Know!

This paragraph introduces the video's focus on dosage calculation, emphasizing the importance of understanding and deciphering drug calculation questions. The speaker, Nurse Bass, acknowledges a request by Becky Shelton for a tutorial on interpreting and extracting crucial information from dosage calculation problems. The paragraph outlines the intention to guide viewers on identifying key elements in questions, rather than delving into the specifics of unit conversions. A simple example is presented, involving calculating the number of tablets to administer based on a prescription for 1500 milligrams of a drug, when the available supply is 500-milligram tablets. The explanation walks through setting up a proportion to solve the problem, highlighting the need to match units and perform cross-multiplication to find the solution.

The second paragraph delves into more complex dosage calculations, particularly those based on the patient's weight. The example given involves calculating the dosage of heparin for a patient weighing 60 kilograms, with a prescription of 10 units per kilogram. The speaker explains how to approach the problem by identifying the relevant units and using cross-multiplication to find the total units required. An additional scenario is introduced where the question asks for the volume in milliliters the patient should receive, given a supply of heparin in units per milliliter. The speaker demonstrates how to solve this by using the same principles of cross-multiplication and unit matching, ultimately providing the answer in milliliters as per the question's requirement.

This paragraph addresses the unique aspects of dosage calculation for IV pumps, which are always set in milliliters per hour. The speaker clarifies that the focus should be on the rate of administration rather than the drug's quantity. An example is provided where the nurse must set the pump to deliver 600 milligrams of Rocephin over 45 minutes, and the supply is Rocephin in 100 milliliters. The speaker guides the viewer through the process of converting the administration time into hours and calculating the required milliliters per hour for the pump. Another example follows, where the nurse needs to determine when a 1000-milliliter bag of normal saline will run out if set at 100 milliliters per hour, leading to a straightforward division problem to find the time elapsed.

The fourth paragraph presents a detailed explanation of calculating the correct flow rate for an IV infusion. The scenario involves administering 2 grams of keflex in 100 milliliters of a 5% dextrose solution over 30 minutes, with the IV tubing delivering 10 drops per milliliter. The speaker advises ignoring the extraneous information and focusing on the essential details: the total volume to be administered and the time frame. By using cross-multiplication and division, the speaker calculates the required drops per minute to administer the medication at the correct rate, emphasizing the importance of discerning what is crucial for solving the problem.

The final paragraph tackles the concept of reconstitution in dosage calculation. The speaker presents a scenario where the nurse must prepare and administer 60 milligrams of protonix IV, which comes in a supply of 1000 milligrams and needs to be reconstituted with 10 milliliters of normal saline to achieve a concentration of 100 milligrams per milliliter. The speaker explains the process of determining the volume to be given by using the order information and the desired concentration, employing cross-multiplication to find the solution. The paragraph concludes with a reminder of the importance of understanding the order requirements and concentration specifications when dealing with reconstitution problems.