math skills in the medical field

Both doctors and nurses use math every day while providing health care for people around the world. Doctors and nurses use math when they write prescriptions or administer medication. Medical professionals use math when drawing up statistical graphs of epidemics or success rates of treatments. Math applies to x-rays and CAT scans. Numbers provide an abundance of information for medical professionals. It is reassuring for the general public to know that our doctors and nurses have been properly trained by studying mathematics and its uses for medicine. Doctors write prescriptions to their patients for various ailments. Prescriptions indicate a specific medication and dosage amount. Most medications have guidelines for dosage amounts in milligrams per kilogram . Doctors need to figure out how many milligrams of medication each patient will need, depending on their weight. If the weight of a patient is only known in pounds, doctors need to convert that measurement to kilograms and then find the amount of milligrams for the prescription. There is a very big difference between mg/kg and mg/lbs, so it is imperative that doctors understand how to accurately convert weight measurements. Doctors must also determine how long a prescription will last. For example, if a patient needs to take their medication, say one pill, three times a day. Then one month of pills is approximately 90 pills. However, most patients prefer two or three month prescriptions for convenience and insurance purposes. Doctors must be able to do these calculations mentally with speed and accuracy. Doctors must also consider how long the medicine will stay in the patient’s body. This will determine how often the patient needs to take their medication in order to keep a sufficient amount of the medicine in the body. For example, a patient takes a pill in the morning that has 50mg of a particular medicine. When the patient wakes up the next day, their body