Part I
Getting Up to Speed: Reviewing Math Basics
In this part . . .
Part I is a review of math basics, just in case you missed a concept or two during your education. Chapter 1 stresses the importance of dosage calculations in all healthcare professions. Chapter 2 is a fun and simple review of numbers and arithmetic. In Chapters 3 and 4, you get important basics for medical math — fractions, systems of measurement, and unit conversions.
Chapter 1
Brushing Up on Your Math Skills and Entering the Healthcare Field
In This Chapter
Looking at the basics of medical math and dosage calculations Taking a look at healthcare careers and the need for math Remembering the importance of compassion, empathy, and other important skills If you’re a healthcare professional (or planning to be one), you’re in one of the most important careers around today. In essence, you help healthy people stay healthy, you help sick people get well, and you help people with critical health conditions live.
Of course, nursing and all health professions involve more than just calculating and administering medications. They’re vocations for comforting the sick and injured — clearly they involve much more than just “pushing meds.”
However, being a successful healthcare provider means being an able mathematician. After all, the field of medicine relies extensively on administering medications, and you must be able to calculate meds correctly before you dispense them.
In any healthcare education program, medical dosage calculations come up in practically every course (or they should). In addition, most schools of nursing have one course devoted entirely to medical dosage calculations.
In this chapter, we introduce you to the math you need to know to perform basic and complex medical dosage calculations. We also provide an overview of the different careers available in the healthcare field (and show you how they all utilize medical math). Finally, we go beyond math and focus on the other essential components of being a good healthcare provider.
Florence Nightingale had a great gift for mathematics. She was a pioneer in presenting information visually — especially health statistics. She has been recognized for developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram. Knowing What Math You Need to Know in Healthcare
In healthcare, you need to know the following three kinds of dosing math:
School math: The math you learn in order to pass tests while getting an education NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination) math: The math you learn to get your license Real-world math: The math you use to handle your job It’s true; you’ll sometimes find questions on tests in school or in practicing for the NCLEX that may never come up in real life, but you still need to be prepared for those questions. Similarly, real life will surely present you with math problems that you never practiced in school. In this section, we cover the math concepts and calculation methods you need to know to be prepared for just about any scenario in healthcare.
Never despair about medical dosage calculations. ... 
