Medication Dosage Calculation: A Mathematical Intervention for Nursing Students

Abstract

<p>Nurse educators continue to express concern over the struggle that nursing students have with mathematical calculations necessary to compute medication dosage. This applied dissertation designed, implemented, and evaluated a structured program of mathematical remediation incorporating dimensional analysis. This program targeted nursing students with demonstrated deficiencies in computation skills. The degree of mathematical preparation that the student was exposed to prior to enrollment into nursing courses was considered worthy of review. The age-old adage of gender differences that were theorized to affect the mathematical ability of students was taken into regard as well. Best practices included a curriculum devised to address the problem, evaluation tools to identify areas of computation deficits, and standard operating procedures designed to guide the initial offering as well as replication of the instructional process. The quantitative research method, specifically, the quasi-experimental design was implemented for the purpose of data collection. The non-randomized one student group was administered the nursing program designed Math Competency for Medication Administration assessment tool as a pre-test-post-test. The results of this applied research program revealed an increase in student scores on the math competency exam from pre to post- testing. Based on this project a recommendation would be to use dimensional analysis as a logical and sequential problem solving method for teaching medication dosage calculation to nursing students.</p>