Example 2 - Oral Meds

 

Here's an example involving a liquid medication.

Ordered 1.5g Carafate TID

Pharmacy sends up a little bottle labeled Carafate 1g per 5ml.

We have our 3 necessary pieces of information :

1. Ordered dose - 1.5g

2. Available form - 5ml

3. Available dose - 1g

What we want to know is how many ml's to give the patient, so starting with what we want to know :

 

 

 

 

Next we take the piece of information we do know that has the same unit (or class of unit) as what we want to know and write it so the unit is in the same position :

 

 

And then multiply by the ordered dose, orienting the units of weight opposite :

 

 

Since the available dose and the ordered dose have the same units (g), we don't need any other factors to convert units - we can just go through and cancel & solve:

 

 

We know we've "thought the problem through" because the only units remaining after canceling is the unit representing what it was that we wanted to know ....

 

©1997-2006 Dale Sampson, RN