When we asked health science instructors about pain points in their classes, helping students understand basic medication math was brought up repeatedly. As a solution, we created the Medical Math Training Kit to reinforce foundational math concepts and introduce students to basic medication math. Here’s how it works.
Prepares Students for Health Science Careers
This training kit can prepare students for a variety of health science careers, making it great for any health science pathway. Medical assistants, CNAs, nurses, emergency medical responders… they all use medication math skills. This kit can help train students for those occupations and many others.
Offers a Variety of Teaching Options
The Medical Math Training Kit comes with a seven-lesson curriculum in both print and online formats. This gives you several options to choose from when deciding how you want to teach this topic. You can teach everything in person, completely online, or a mix of both. The curriculum covers everything from basics, such as fractions and decimals, to specific medication math, like dosage calculations for adult and pediatric patients and more complicated math related to infusion rate and manual drip rates.
Completing the full curriculum from start to finish would take 7-10 hours, but you can pick and choose which lessons and activities work best for your program. It includes presentation slides, detailed steps of activities, and time and materials needed.
Allows for Independent, Self-Paced Learning
Students can learn all about medication math independently with the online lessons. These lessons feature digital flashcards, videos, practice questions, and more to keep students engaged as they learn. The lessons keep track of student progress, making it easy for them return to their studies after taking breaks.
Provides Hands-On Application Activities
Once students learn the material either in class or online, it’s time to apply their knowledge with the student workbook activities. The workbooks include quizzes, practice problems, and fun facts about medication math. View our student workbook sample for a closer look.
Addresses a Variety of Learning Objectives
This kit helps teach a basic math review as well as three different ways to solve medical math problems: ratio/proportion, desired/have, and dimensional analysis. The first three lessons refresh students’ memory on general math concepts they’ll use in medication math. The last four cover math topics specific to medication math. Here is a breakdown of the lessons and their learning objectives:
- Fractions, Decimals, Ratios, and Percentages
- Add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and decimals
- Round decimals
- Convert fractions, decimals, ratios, and percentages
- Calculate using the ratio/proportion method
- Measurement Systems
- Calculate between measurements in the metric system
- Convert apothecary and household measurements
- Calculate time using the standard and military time
- Conversions
- Convert between U.S. customary and metric length and temperature measurements
- Convert between household and metric volume and weight measurements
- Methods and Oral Medications
- Explain three primary methods of calculation
- Use the CSC approach to calculations
- Describe the parts of a drug label
- Calculate oral medication dosages
- Pediatric Dosages
- Calculate dosages based on weight and body surface area
- Calculate safe dosage ranges
- Injection Calculations
- Calculate intradermal, intramuscular, IV push, and subcutaneous dosages
- Calculate insulin and heparin dosages
- Calculate dosages requiring reconstitution
- Infusion Calculations
- Calculate dosage for IV administration via pump
- Calculate dosage for IV via gravity
- Calculate time for IV administration
For a closer look at our curriculum, check out our curriculum sample. You can also unlock a free trial of the program here.
Learn More
Looking for more information on health science learning aids? Consider these resources:
- Creating a Budget-Friendly Healthcare Simulation Lab with These Manikins
- 8 Wearable Trainers for Enhancing Soft Skills Development in Health Care Careers
- Our webinar, “Teaching Math in Your Health Science Program”
