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| Course Name |
| Introductory Course in Pharmacy Math |
Contact Hours: 40 |
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| Course Description |
Calculating and preparing medications for others properly and safely is a top priority for healthcare professionals. Nurses and allied health professionals must sensibly solve medication calculation problems and use rational judgment when determining patient dosages. Healthcare professionals may make drug errors unknowingly by depending solely on the calculation without first determining what the dosage should be. Using critical thinking skills helps in this determination.
Medical Pharmacy Math is designed to assist you with using critical thinking skills, understanding medication orders, equipment used in medication preparation and administrating, and drug labels in addition to calculating dosages administered oral and parenteral routes using structured systems of measurement.
In this course, the student will be provided with a great deal of one on one tutoring by a professional and certified mathematics teacher. Professional lessons will be provided for the student, along with an assignment which will be submitted by the student and marked by the teacher. The teacher will tutor the student on any problem areas or difficulties that the student will encounter through the course of study. A diagnostic test will be written by the student and marked by the teacher at the beginning of the course.
Prerequisite
In order to register for this course, the student is assumed to be able to perform basic mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of decimal numbers and fractions.
This course entails one-on-one instructor interaction directly with the student and can be completed in an accelerated fashion with permission.
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| Outcome |
By completing this course you will be able to:
- Interpret metric measurements, household measurements, and apothecary measurements as they relate to medication calculations.
- Conversions.
- Dosage calculations.
- Calculating children’s dosages based on body weight.
- Calculating IV rates.
- Interpreting drug labels.
- Interpreting Physician medication orders.
- Identify parts of a prescription.
- Identify and correctly use JACHO approved abbreviations.
- Therapeutic classifications of drugs.
- Safety in drug administrating.
- Proper use and disposal of used needles/syringes.
- Find information on drugs using drug reference sources.
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| Assessment |
The student works through professional lessons and completes an assignment for each lesson of the course. This assignment is sent to the teacher who then marks and returns the assignment to the student along with the grade and extra tutoring, if required.
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| Required Book(s) |
| Please Note: an additional textbook purchase is required for this course of study.
Pharmacy Calculations (4th Edition) by Mary F. Powers and Janet B. Wakelin,
ISBN: 978-1-61731-074-4 may be purchased new or used through Amazon.com. |
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| Outline |
- Basic Math Review
- Ratios, Percents, and Ratio Proportion
- Three systems of measurement, drug orders, and drug labels
- Metric, household, and Apothecary systems
- Conversions of the metric, household, and apothecary systems
- Time and temperature conversions
- Equipment used in Oral and parenteral medication administration
- Interpreting medication orders and abbreviations used
- Reading and understanding medication labels
- Preventing medication errors
- Drug dosage calculations
- Oral Dosages
- Parenteral Dosages
- Reconstitution of solutions and powders
- Calculating medication dosages
- Calculating Pediatric dosages
- Advanced Calculations
- Intravenous solutions and calculations
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