Tablets and capsules oral dosage calculation practice problems made incredibly easy for nursing students.
Hey everyone it’s sarah with registernursern.com and in this video we’re going to be solving some capsules and tablets dosage calculations and as always whenever you get done watching this youtube video you can access the free quiz that will give you more practice problems so let’s get started our first problem says the physician writes an order to administer an
Oral medication the order says administer 0.1 gram by mouth once daily pharmacy dispenses you with 100 milligrams per tablet how many tablets do you administer per dose so from the scenario we have pulled out the most important information we need to know in order to solve our problem so first we need to know what was ordered the doctor ordered .1 gram once daily
Pharmacy has supplied us with tablets that say there is 100 milligrams per tablet so every tablet we have there’s 100 milligrams in it and our problem wants us to figure out how many tablets we’re going to give with each dose so this patient is only receiving it once per day and we need to figure out how we can give this many tablets in order to equal this dose
So to solve these problems i’m going to use dimensional analysis and i have a whole series that you can access where i show you how to work dimensional analysis and we work a bunch of different dosage calculation problems so let’s set up our problem first we’re going to start with what was ordered so 0.1 gram was ordered and it’s ordered once daily so that’s our
Dose one dose and we have to get tablets per dose that’s what we’re trying to figure out so we’re supplied with tablets that are in milligrams so right there we’re going to have to start converting so remember you have to know your metric table commit this table to memory so we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to get to milligrams so from the metric table we
Know that one gram equals a thousand milligrams grams cancels out so we’re now in milligrams and now we can plug in what we have on hand so we have on hand tablets so each tablet has a hundred milligrams in it equals one tablet okay and we’re where we need to get we need to get to tablets per dose so we’re ready to solve so we’re going to multiply everything
At the top everything at the bottom and divide so when we multiply everything at the top and bottom we get 100 over 100 and then we’re going to divide that out 100 divided by 100 is 1. so our answer is one tablet per dose is what this patient is going to receive our next problem says the physician writes an order to administer an oral medication the order says
Administer 25 milligrams by mouth bid pharmacy dispenses you with 50 milligram tablets how many tablets do you administer per day not per dose so we pull from our scenario the most important information we need in order to solve so we need to know what was ordered so 25 milligrams twice a day that’s what bid means by mouth and we’re supplied with 50 milligram
Tablets so each tablet is worth 50 milligrams now our problem wants us to solve for how many tablets are we going to give for the whole day not per dose so make sure you really pay attention to that part of your problem because if you just solve for tablets for those you would get it wrong okay so we’re going to use dimensional analysis to solve and this is going
To be like a two-step problem okay so we’re gonna start out with what’s ordered so the physician ordered 25 milligrams that is equal to one dose and we are supplied with tablets that are 50 milligram tablets so we don’t have to convert like we did with our last problem so we don’t have to really use the metric table so 50 milligrams is equal to one tablet okay
Tablets per dose so we’ll go ahead and solve and then we’ll plug in for our next step so when you multiply everything at the top and everything at the bottom you get 25 we’re gonna with 50 and then we divide that out and we get 0.5 tablet per dose so one dose is going to equal half a tablet but we need to know how many tablets we’re going to give for the whole day
So we’re going to use dimensional analysis to demonstrate that so we know that the patient needs two doses that’s what bid means so two doses is how much they’re going to get in one day and we know one dose equals half a tablet okay dose doses cancels out and we’re left with tablets per day and that is where we’re trying to get that was our destination so we’re
Going to multiply everything at the top everything at the bottom and then divide and get our answer so when you do that 1 1 divide that out of course you get 1. so it’s tablet per day is what this patient will be receiving our next problem says the physician writes an order to administer an oral medication the order says administer two milligrams per kilogram
Per dose by mouth every six hours as needed for pain pharmacy dispenses you with the following 20 milligrams per capsule the child weighs 22 pounds how many capsules do you administer per day not per dose so again we have pulled the most important information we need in order to solve this problem so we need to know what’s ordered the physician has ordered two
Milligrams per kilogram per dose every six hours as needed for pain so for every kilogram this child weighs we’re going to give them two milligrams per dose so our drug is weight base and we’re supplied with capsules that are 20 milligram capsules and we’re given the patient’s weight which is 22 pounds and we need to know what to solve for so we’re solving for
How many capsules we’re going to give them per day so in that whole day not per dose so what we’re going to do is we’re going to set up our dimensional analysis and this will be like a two-step problem like how we did before where we solve for the individual dose and then we’ll figure out how many we’re going to give them the whole day so first what we’re going to
Start with is plugging in the patient’s weight because this is in pounds we have to get to kilograms because that’s how it’s ordered so let’s go ahead and plug that in so our patient weighs 22 pounds and we know from the metric table that there’s 2.2 pounds in one kilogram so pounds cancels out now we’re ready to plug in what was ordered so for every kilogram
This patient weighs we’re going to give them two milligrams per dose kilograms cancels out now we’re going to plug in what we’re given what we’re supplied with so we’re given 20 milligram capsules so there’s 20 milligrams in one capsule okay so milligrams cancels out we’re left with capsules per dose but remember we got to get to capsules per day so we’ll go ahead
And solve this multiply everything at the top everything at the bottom when you do that you get 44 for the top 44 for the bottom you divide that out and you get one capsule per dose now we need to figure out how many they can have for the whole day because this patient can have this every six hours so let’s plug this in and figure it out so we know that 24 hours
Equals one day and we know that this patient can have this every six hours every six hours what can they have they can have one capsule so that cancels out our hours and we’re left with capsules per day which is what we’re trying to solve for so we’re going to multiply everything at the top everything at the bottom and divide when you multiply everything at the
Top you get 24 everything at the bottom you get six divide that out you get four so they can have four capsules per day and that is our answer okay so that wraps up this review over capsules and tablets and if you’d like some more practice problems don’t forget to access that free quiz and to check out the other videos in this series
Transcribed from video
Tablets and Capsules Oral Dosage Calculations Nursing NCLEX Review By RegisteredNurseRN
