Administering Medications to Patients -- Calculating Dosages in the Clinical Setting
Summary
In this Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum activity, students use Excel to calculate correct medication dosages. Students are first asked to think conceptually about dosage administration and then presented with a case study in which they have to determine the quantity and frequency of the dosage based on a medication order. Students also create an xy scatter plot to examine the relationship of metric units, specifically grams and milligrams.
Collapse
Learning Goals
- Gain experience in using ratios and proportions.
- Use equations and graphical interpretation to examine the relationship of units within the metric system.
- be more comfortable thinking in terms of, and working with, the metric system.
- complete simple, yet extremely important, calculations to determine correct medication dosages.
Context for Use
Description and Teaching Materials
The module is a PowerPoint presentation with embedded spreadsheets. If the embedded spreadsheets are not visible, save the PowerPoint file to disk and open it from there.
This PowerPoint file is the student version of the module. An instructor version is available by request. The instructor version includes the completed spreadsheet. Send your request to Len Vacher (vacher@usf.edu) by filling out and submitting the Instructor Module Request Form.