Practise Your Skills
This quiz contains a similar range of questions to those that you will encounter on exam day.
It covers basic medication calculations including:
SI Unit Conversion
Tablets and Capsules
Liquid Medicines
Injections
Questions will include unit doses, multiple unit doses and sub unit doses, total daily dosages and embedded SI Unit Conversions. Please be prepared to look out for all of these question types.
Be aware that the word 'unit' has at least three different meanings in medication calculations:
1. A standard unit of measurement, for example, weight or volume. See http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure/ for further details.
2. A type of dose that relates to the dispensed quantity. According to Hutton (2009) a 'unit dose' is where the prescribed dose is the same as the dispensed dose. Imagine that you have a packet of 250mg scored tablets. If your patient needs 250mg, you would simply give them one tablet. This is a 'unit dose'. A 'multiple unit dose' means that the prescribed quantity is larger than dispensed quantity, so you have to give more than one. If the patient was prescribed 500mg, you would give 2 tablets. This is a 'multiple unit dose'. Finally, a 'sub-unit dose' is where the prescribed dose is less than the dispensed dose. If your patient only needed 125mg, you might be able to split the tablet, and give them half a tablet. This is an example of a 'sub-unit dose'.
3. The measurement (IU = International Unit) by which some biological medications, including insulin, are delivered. There is currently no formal equivalence between International Units and any other measurement in the SI or metric systems (WHO 2015). Insulin calculations in 'units' do not appear in your Year 1 exam.
These are very basic explanations, but should cover what you need to know for your Year 1 exam. The publications below give further explanations if you would like to explore these concepts in more depth.
References
BIPM (2014) The SI Units Brochure Online at: http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure/ [Accessed on: 13 July 2015]
Hutton M (2009) Essential Calculations Skills for Nurses, Midwives and Healthcare Practitioners Maidenhead: McGrawHill Edcuation/Open University Press
World Health Organization (2015) WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization Online at: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/173739/1/9789240694095_eng.pdf?ua=1&ua=1 [Accessed on: 13 July 2015]
Time limit: 1 hour
Grading method: Highest grade