Practice Question: Medication – Ratio and Proportion (Nursing)

00:00 So let's try some practice problems.

00:02 The nurse practitioner has ordered 1 dose of 0.15 mg of Adrenostat IM now.

00:10 You have 0.2 mg of Adrenostat in 1.5 ml.

00:16 Okay. So, the known ratio. What do I have? 0.2 mg in 1.5 ml.

00:25 So before you go on, make sure that makes sense to you how we came up with that first fraction.

00:29 If you're ready to go, let's keep going.

00:32 If you wanna pause and reflect for a minute, you make that decision.

00:36 Okay now, here's our basic rules. You've seen these before.

00:40 You identify the known ratio, which we did on the previous slide.

00:43 Now, we have to identify the unknown ratio based from the physician's order.

00:48 You set up the proportion, cross multiply and solve and then check your answer by plugging your result into the unknown ratio just as a safeguard for your patients.

00:58 So we've got the ordered there.

01:01 The nurse practitioner has ordered one dose of 0.15 mg of Adrenostat IM now that means you don't wait.

01:09 You wanna give it right now. You have 0.2 mg of Adrenostat in 1.5 mL.

01:17 Okay so what we have is 0.2 and 1.5, that's the known ratio.

01:23 Now we're figuring out for 0.15 mg, how many ml would I give? That's the unknown.

01:31 So you set up the problem. Now we cross multiply and solve.

01:35 We've got the math for you up there on the screen. 0.2 times x equals 1.5 times 0.15.

01:44 We get 0.2x equals 0.225. So when we do the math, we come up with x equaling 1.125.

01:56 So you cross multiplied, you solved for x by dividing by the number that's in front of the x and that's what we came up with.

02:04 X equals 1.125. Now you check your answer by plugging x in, right? So that's why we have this new representation.

02:15 0.2 over 1.5, 0.15 over 1.125.

02:21 When you work out the math. Sweet. 0.225 equals 0.225.

02:27 Absolutely. Good job. Got that one correct.