Dosage Calculations Nursing Students: This video demonstrates how to solve dosage and calculation problems for reconstitution of medications. I use dimensional analysis to do this and show step-by-step how to solve these problems for nursing school or nclex review.
Hey everyone it’s sarah with registerednessrn.com and in this video we’re going to go over a teaching tutorial specifically reconstituting drugs now these drug problems are a little bit more advanced and on my other teaching tutorials i’ve went over oral dosages iv boluses infusion rates any everything like that so be sure to check out those videos because they
Come with a free quiz now in this teaching tutorial i’m going to work five problems and then afterwards i highly encourage you to visit my website registerednessrn.com a link should be popping up and take the free quiz that goes along with this teaching tutorial we’re going to go over these drug problems and these drug problems tend to be a little bit more advanced
Compared to the other poems we worked in the past they’re really long as you can tell they like to confuse you they’ll throw numbers out there and you have to really ask yourself what is this problem asking me for and what information is important in that problem so let’s get started my first problem is this it says typically this is what it’s going to look like
Whenever you’re getting it on an exam the doctor order says vancomycin 2 000 micrograms iv the label on the vial of vanco says to reconstitute with sterile water for a concentration of two milligrams per milliliter then dilute each two milligrams in 75 milliliters of sterile normal saline how many milliliters will you use to administer this ordered dose a lot
Of stuff so let’s underline the most important things okay first of all ask yourself what is this question asking us for this question is asking us for milliliters per dose so let’s just write that right here so we know what we’re looking for okay and let’s underline the important stuff okay vancomycin 2 000 milligrams iv that’s important that’s what the doctors
Ordered so we’re going to underline that and right here it’s telling us the concentration of two milligrams per milliliter this is irrelevant this we don’t need to know this what we need to know is after we dilute it with our saline what is the concentration going to be after that which is going to be 2 milligrams per 75 milliliters so for every 75 milliliters there’s
2 milligrams of vancomycin in it that’s what we’re worrying about right now because this number right here the 2 milliliter 2 milligrams per milliliter that’s just telling us what it’s concentrated at we want to know after we reconstitute it make it unconcentrated what is in this vial for us to give the patient so those are the important things that we need to know
Now let’s solve our problem okay i always like to start out with what the doctor ordered he ordered he or she ordered 2 000 micrograms and 2 000 micrograms equals one dose and we’re trying to get milliliters to dose right now we’re in micrograms per dose okay now our information two milligrams in 75 cc’s we’ve got to get this micrograms to milligrams so remember
In the previous videos we talked about the metric table and converting so we’re going to convert this how you know this is from memory and so we know that there are a thousand micrograms in one milligram that cancels out micrograms right now we’re milli milligrams per dose trying to get two milliliters per dose and now we can use the information that’s in our
Problem and after it’s reconstituted we get two milligrams for every 75 cc’s or milliliters cc’s milliliters are the same thing and mark out milligrams and we are milliliters per dose so we are ready to solve so multiply everything at the top at the bottom and then divide and 2 000 times 1 times 75 is 150 000 and 1 times 1 000 times 2 is 2 000 and we’re going to
Divide 150 000 divided by 2000 is 75. so the answer to this problem is 75 milliliters per dose so let’s solve next problem okay problem 2 says the following a vial of doxorubicin reads 0.5 grams per vial instructions say to reconstitute each 12 milligrams with 2.5 milliliters of normal saline how many milliliters of normal saline will be needed to reconstitute
The vial of the recommended concentration so you’ve got to ask yourself what is this problem wanting the problem is wanting milliliters per vial how many milliliters are you going to have to draw up and inject into this file to equal the recommended dose so what we’re looking for is milliliters per vial okay let’s underline the most important things that we’ll be
Plugging into our problem to use dimensional analysis um the first thing is the zero i mean the 0.5 grams per vial that’s very important the next thing is 12 milligrams for every 2.5 milliliters of normal saline that we’re going to inject it’s going to make 12 milligrams so that is very important so how many milliliters are we going to need total to equal these
0.5 grams so let’s solve okay let’s start out with what the vial is originally the vial is a 0.5 gram bile so we’re going to put 0.5 grams is one vial now we are trying to get from milliliters to vial and we know from our information up here that the 12 milligrams is in milligrams and what our vial is is in grams so we’ve got to convert that to milligrams so
You know this from the metric table this is from memory we know that there’s one gram in every thousand milligrams so grams cancels out right now we’re in milligrams per ball we’ve got to get to milliliters per mile now we can use the information that is in our problem so there are 12 milligrams and 2.5 milliliters from the problem that cancels out milligrams
And we’re stuck with milliliters per vial we’re ready to solve because that’s where we wanted to get so we’re going to multiply everything at the top multiply everything down the bottom then divide so point five times one thousand times two point five equals one thousand two hundred and fifty and then one times one times twelve is twelve and twelve one thousand
Two 1250 divided by 12 equals 104.2 okay so 104.2 milliliters per vial is what we would have to do in order to get that problem so let’s work our next problem problem says instructions on a vial of one gram of doxorubicin instructs to reconstitute with normal saline to make a concentration of one milligram per milliliter after reconstituting two vials you would
Administer blank mls to administer a 500 milligram dose so let’s look at and ask yourself what’s this problem asking okay this problem is asking how many milliliters are we going to give per dose now what’s the most important stuff in this problem okay well we need to first look and see what the doctor ordered the doctor ordered 500 milligrams per dose see they
Just sort of threw that in at the end so you would have to know next you need to see what the concentration is what are you supplied with so you can give this 500 milligram dose and after you reconstitute it according to the problem you’re going to get a concentration of one milligram per ml now you may be thrown off with the one gram up there that is just telling
You hey you got a vial of doxorubicin and it’s one gram that’s in there to throw you off what you’re looking for is what the doctor ordered and what the concentration is going to be after you reconstituted it because you have this one gram bile but you’ve added a normal saline to it and you’ve changed its makeup it’s how concentrated it is to equal one milligram of
One ml so that’s in there throw you off so then the most another important part of it is this the two vials this problem is telling you hey you’ve already reconstituted two vials so you know you’re going to have to double something since you’re using two vials so that’s another important part so let’s plug this information into a problem and see what our answer
Is okay we’re going to of course start out with what the doctor ordered they ordered 500 milligrams is one dose that’s what the patient’s getting and we’re trying to get to milliliters per dose now says one milligram per ml is in one vial after you reconstitute it but according to the problem you gave two vials so we’re gonna double it so instead of putting
One milligram equals one milliliter we’re going to say two milligrams equals two milliliters because remember we gave two vials so it would be two milligrams equals two milliliters now milligrams cancels out and we need to get to milliliters per dose which we have and so we’re ready to solve so 500 times two equals a thousand and two times one is two and we’re
Gonna divide a thousand divided by two is five hundred so the answer is five hundred milliliters per dose okay let’s do our last problem the problem says instructions on a 2.5 gram vial of chlorothiazide reads to reconstitute it with 20 ml of sterile water this will provide a concentration of how many milligrams per milliliter so in the previous problems we were
Already given that information but here what it’s saying is you have a vial it’s 2.5 grams and you’re going to add 20 milliliters of saline to it so after you do that what’s the new concentration going to be so that is what we are looking for so this part 2.5 milligram 2.5 grams is most important and 20 mls of normal saline is the most important so and we’re but
We’re trying to get to milligrams per milliliter so already looking at this problem we know that we’re going to take some extra steps and convert so first let’s do what the bile is there is 2.5 grams and we’re going to put 20 milliliters of saline in it okay now we’re going to convert our milligram our grams to milligrams we know that there’s one gram for every
Thousand milligrams and that cancels out grams and we’re done we have our mill milligrams per milliliter so 2.5 times a thousand is twenty five hundred two thousand five hundred and twenty times one is twenty and twenty five hundred divided by twenty equals a hundred and twenty five milligrams per milliliter okay so that is how you solve those problems now i
Highly encourage you to go to my website registerednessrn.com a link should be popping up and take the free quiz that goes along with these type of problems so you’ll be prepared for your nursing school classes and you can never practice too many drug problems so thank you so much for watching and please subscribe to my youtube channel
Transcribed from video
Dosage Calculations Made Easy | Reconstitution Calculation Medication Problems Nursing Students (10) By RegisteredNurseRN
