Mathematics In Nursing: Nursing At Western Carolina University

Jill Johnson

Professor Eilers

Math 130-09

27 September 2017

Mathematics in Nursing

I am currently a sophomore majoring in pre-nursing here at Western Carolina University. I have chosen nursing as my career path because I feel it best suits my interest and personality. I currently work as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) at my local hospital and have started to learn the ins and outs of health care. A nurse is someone who cares for the overall well being of patients and has an in-depth understanding of many sciences and the human body. That being said, nurses use a great deal of math on a day to day basis. Calculating input and outputs, drug dosages/ IV drips, and also calculating drug resistance are some of the few ways a nurse will use

This specific job entails measuring everything that is taken into the body via oral or other route and comparing it to the output, otherwise known as what is voided. This enables health care professionals to make sure that patients are absorbing the right amount of nutrients and are well hydrated. Measurements such as these are an important aspect when trying to diagnose specific nutritional disorders and diseases. Sometimes they are required to convert between systems which are important for accurate measurements. An example of this would be if a patient consumed one cup of apple juice and only 25 percent of their meal tray how much would you predict them to void? Output is always measured in fluid ounces so a nurse would have to understand how to convert cups into fluid ounces in this scenario; if the patients intake was 1 cup, you would expect the output to be eight fluid

This also plays a role in understanding antibiotic resistance to a specific drug. Let us assume that a pathogenic cell reproduces every thirty minutes, meaning they are multiplying and sharing genetic DNA. In every hour there are two thirty minute segments. Within just twelve hours, 16,777,216 bacterium can be found in the body causing illness. By calculating the number of pathogenic bacteria, nurses are able to determine how strong a dosage of medication is needed to treat this infection. In big outbreaks of disease, nurses are able to calculate the case fertility rates. For example, if 20,000 people were infected with malaria and 4,000 people died, what is the CRF of this disease? To calculate this, you would dived the amount of people who died by the number of people who were infected, then multiply by 100 to give you 20% for this specific disease. This helps other health care professionals with global statistics of certain pathogenic