• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          …being in nursing school is giving me a strong hatred for the imperial system.

          The doctor ordered 35mg/kg Watdafuqenol IV QID. Available is a 2’ by 15" section of torn out carpet soaked in spilled Watdafuqenol; when wrung out into the patient’s left shoe, you get 97 chipmunk-mouthfuls diluted to a concentration of 24 Watdafuqenol to 1 toe jam. How many shot glasses full do you administer?

          • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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            2 months ago

            You might’ve already seen this, but try using the method of dimensional analysis where you work backwards on a single line and you’ll never get one of those problems wrong again.

            The key is just working backwards by units using the equations you have available. I know somebody that only got one of the questions on his MCAT correct bc he used this method lol.

            • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I use dimensional analysis, but it’s over two lines… and not sure what you mean by working backwards, since the order doesn’t really matter so long as every value is in the correct line.

              Since typing it out would be ugly as sin, example image stolen from google:

              …they like to give us things like pt weight in lbs and oz, and ask for final product of tablespoons or some shit cuz they enjoy wasting our time, lol.

              That the type you mean?

              I know there are a few different ways to crunch the numbers, but DA is my favorite so far cuz it’s so consistent.

              *edit, example pic changed, first one put mcg twice in the same line, which is a weird move. /shrug

              • oldfart@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                So USAnian drugs are in metric units? I hope in actual work nurses get to use a phone app or something because this asks for mistakes

                • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  99% of it is metric. I think the biggest outlier is home care, where you go visit some grandma who’s actively offended by metric, so if you tell her to take 7.5mL of something she’ll just do the deer in the headlights thing, then shove the bottle up her ass.

                  Tell her instead that she needs to take 3 Mountain Dew caps full and suddenly she can follow instructions enough to not kill herself.

                • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Even in the US, science is mostly metric. But most US people are not exactly the scientific kind…

                  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                    2 months ago

                    Modern science is, but there’s plenty of old journals from the 80s and earlier that use degrees Rankine and gallons.

                • frezik@midwest.social
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                  2 months ago

                  It works fine when everything around you is in those numbers. The scale for medications might be set to mg, or injections in mL. The bottles for both are labeled the same way. Everything works together, and you don’t really have to think about it.

                  Part of the problem with converting everything to metric is it really needs to be everything. You can try talking about driving distances in km, and your gas tank in L/100km, and your speed in km/hr. However, the interstate highway signs will still be in miles, you buy gas in gallons, and the speed limit signs are in mph. This isn’t a case where you can just choose to use the metric system as an individual, because the whole system works against you.

                  • oldfart@lemm.ee
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                    2 months ago

                    That is understandable, I was surprised that metric is actually used somewhere. Use in pharmacy also explains why in Hollywood stoner comedies they used grams, which always confused me.

                • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Gotcha! Yeah same page - some of the other students don’t like that method cuz it can take a bit longer, but building the equation kinda idiot proofs itself against calculating for the wrong unit, and it’s super consistent! Definitely my favorite so far.

            • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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              2 months ago

              Even dimensional analysis works best with metric because sometimes you need to convert units and almost all conversion in metric are base 10, so something like 1kg/km is 1000g/1000m is 1 gram per meter. But in imperial 1 pound/mile is 16 ounces / 5280 feet is who the fuck knows how many ounces per feet.

          • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            You’ll never see dosage questions like that on the NCLEX. If you do it’ll be like one. I breezed through it when I took it, but basic knowledge questions are minimal (as long as you don’t get them wrong).

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Metric is excellent until it gets into data units. There shouldn’t be a difference between 4T and 4TB, but it’s actually a (10244-10004) ≈ 92.6G (99.5GB) difference because of the fuckers who decided to make data units metric and rename the base-2 data units to “kibibyte”/“mibi*”/“gibi*” (KiB/MiB/GiB)