Guides
Guides
Guides to dosage calculations for nursing students, each with a worked example, the rounding rule it uses and its sources. Practice, never patient care.
Published
Exam prep and program rules
The dosage calculation exam in nursing school: what is on it and how programs grade it
What a nursing school dosage calculation exam covers and how ten programs grade it: 90% or 100% to pass, retake rules, calculator rules and rounding.
Rounding and notation rules
Rounding rules for dosage calculations
Rounding rules for nursing dosage calculations: tenths, hundredths, whole drops, when to round, and why one working can give three different answers.
Common mistakes
Six dosage calculation mistakes and the wrong answers they leave
Six dosage calculation mistakes nursing students make on exams: decimal point, wrong unit, pounds for kilograms, inverted factor, skipped conversion, rounding.
Methods and notations
Dimensional analysis for nursing dosage calculations
How dimensional analysis works for nursing dosage calculations, with worked chains that cancel units, compared with ratio and proportion and the formula method.
IV rates
IV drip rate formula: how to work out drops per minute
The IV drip rate formula for nursing students: volume times drop factor divided by time in minutes, with worked gtt/min problems and rounding to whole drops.