Dosage Calculations Nursing

hey everyone it's nurse Sarah and in this video I'm want to be solving IV calculations where we're going to be solving for the completion time infusion time and the flow rate so let's get started our first problem says that the healthcare provider ordered 1500 Millers of fluid to infuse at a rate of 100 milliliters per hour the IV tubing set has a drop factor of 20 drops per milliliter you start the infusion at 10:08 a.m. this is military time on 216 so what you need to solve for is is what is the flow rate how many hours it will take to infuse so our infusion time and what time the bag of fluids will be done infusing so our completion time to help us solve these problems I'm going to be using dimensional analysis now if you're not familiar with dimensional analysis you can access these videos up here which will show you how to set these problems up using that method so the very first thing what we're going to do is we're going to solve for the flow rate and flow rate is written in drops per minute that is our goal where we need to get in our problem so in order to solve for that I need to know two things from the problem we just read I need to know the rate of infusion so how fast this fluid is going to be infusing like milliliters per hour so it tells us that our patient is going to be getting 100 milliliters of fluid every hour then I need to know the drop Factor where do we get this drop factor from well this is from our IV tubing set your IV tubing set will tell you what the drop the drop factor is like for instance on this bag right here it tells me it has a drop factor of 10 drops per milliliter so in order to equal a milliliter of fluid this tubing set has to deliver 10 drops so here our problem tells us that the IV tubing set we're using is going to deliver 20 drops for every milliliter so we have that information now let's plug it in using our dimensional analysis the very first thing I want to do is I want to go ahead and get my converting out of the way because we have to get to drops per minute our our information from our problem is in hours right here milliliters per hour so I'm going to start out with that we know from converting conversion table that 1 hour equals 60 minutes okay so now let's plug in our information so our rate of infusion we know when we set up dimensional analysis that this unit needs to match that unit so it can cancel out so one hour is going to give us 100 milliliters of fluid to our patient that cancels out hours now let's plug in our drop Factor so we know that 1 Mill gives us 20 drops of fluid from that IV tubing set that cancels out milliliters now we're just left with drops per minute that's where we got to go so we're ready to solve so we're going to multiply everything at the top when we do that we get 2,000 we're going to multiply everything at the bottom that gives us 60 then we're going to go ahead and divide so 2,000 divide by 60 is 33.33 repeating we're going to round to the nearest whole number round how your program wants you to round so that rounds to 33 drops per minute and that is our Ivy flow rate now let's solve for Infusion time so we want our answer to be in hours and minutes that's our goal sometimes this answer will just be in hours because everything divides out nice and evenly but a lot of times that doesn't happen you have these leftover minutes which you have to know because we need a correct completion time and in order to solve for this we need to know three things we need to know the total volume we're going to infuse which from our problem it tells us we're going to give 1,500 milliliters we need to know our flow rate which is what we just calculated and we got 33 drops per minute and then we need to know the drop factor which again is 20 drops per ml so as I'm saying this problem up with dimensional analysis I want to start out with the total volume that needs to be infused to this patient so this patient needs a total of 1500 MLS and they're going to get one dose of this so since we're doing dimensional analysis we need the same unit down here so everything can cancel out here in a moment here we're going to plug in our drop factors so we know that for every ml they're getting they're going to get 20 drops that cancels out our milliliters now let's go over here put drops here again and this is where we're going to plug in our flow rate so we know that the patient's going to get 33 drops every minute and that cancels out drops so we're in minutes but I need hours and minutes because if we just calculated this out now we'll get this really big number and we'll have to figure out how many hours are within those minutes so what we're going to do is we're going to do a little converting and we know that there are 60 Minutes in 1 hour so that is definitely where I want to be our minutes cancels out now I'm ready to solve so when you multiply everything at the top and everything at the bottom what you're going to get this top part you're going to get 30,000 and this bottom part you're going to get 1,980 then we have to divide that out when we do that we get 15.15 repeating and I'm going to round to the nearest hundredth so we get 15.15 so here this is an hours okay this whole number I need to know the minutes too so we're going to take this little extra part that's left over since it's an hours and I'm going to convert it into minutes so we're going to take 0.15 because that's our leftover amount and that is in hours and using dimensional analysis again so we're going to put hours down here and we know that 1 hour equals 60 minutes and that's where I need to be is in minutes because I want that in minutes so whenever I multiply everything at the top and everything at the bottom what I'm going to get is 9 minutes so our answer is 15 hours and 9 minutes that is how long long it's going to take for this to infuse and then lastly let's solve for a completion time so this answer is going to be with the time and military time and the date and to solve for this we need to know the infusion time which again we just calculated it it's what 15 hours and 9 minutes and then we need to know the start time when we actually started the spag of fluids and the problem told us was at 108 and in regular time that's 10:08 in the morning and we started this on February 16th so to calculate this out it's very easy it's my favorite part of solving all these because it's very straightforward we're just going to add and subtract so our start time was this so we're going to put this as our start time we're going to add it to this because this is how we have to go forward so 15 hours and 9 minutes when we add that up we get 25 17 well that is not a time because we know there's only 24 hours in a day so we're going to subtract that from 2400 and when we subtract that we get 0 1 17 hours and when we convert that if you're going to do it not in military time just for your own benefit you know that that's one 17 in the morning but when you're answering these questions you want to keep it in military time and don't don't forget to change the date because we have now went over to the next day so you're going to put 27 and be sure you always change that because you don't want to get a problem wrong with just putting the wrong date the next problem says the healthcare provider ordered 2 and2 liters of fluid to infuse at a rate of 125 milliliters per hour the IV tubing set has a drop factor of 15 drops per milliliter you start the infusion at 2215 on 414 what is the flow rate how long will it take for it to infuse so our infusion time and what time will the bag of fluids be done infusing so our completion time so first what we're going to do is we're going to solve for that IV flow rate in order to solve for it we need this information from our problem and we got to get to drops per minute first thing what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and knock out that converting so we are going to say that 1 hour equals 60 minutes and we know from our problem that for every hour that patient's going to get 125 milliliters cancels out hours now we're going to plug in our drop Factor so every milliliter that patient's receiving from the IV tubing set they're getting 15 drops and that causes our milliliters to cancel out and we are in drops per minute that's where we need to get so we're going to go ahead and multiply everything at the top and bottom and divide so when we multiply everything at the top we get 1,875 everything at the bottom you get 60 and then when we divide that out we're going to get 31.25 we're going to round to the nearest whole number which gives us 31 drops per minute and this is our flow rate now let's solve for our infusion time so this is the information we need to solve for this and we we got to get to hours and minutes very first thing I want to do is I'm going to go ahead and put in the total volume to infuse so we're going to give 2 and2 lers going do one dose of that now I'm in liters I've got to get to milliliters because this is what my draw factor is in so I'm going to do a little converting and we know from the metric table that 1 liter equals 1,000 millit so that is checked off we're good now let's plug in other stuff in our problem so next we're going to plug in this drop Factor so we know that 1 ml is equal to 15 drops with our tubing set so that cancels out milliliters now we're going to put in our IV flow rate so we just solved for that so we know that the patient is going to get 31 drops every minute that cancels out our drops now we need to get into hours because it's going to give us a big number of minutes so I need some hours so I can then calculate our minutes so we know that there are 60 Minutes in 1 hour that cancels out minutes now we're where I need to be so we're going to multiply everything at the top and everything at the bottom and then divide so when you multiply everything at the top you are going to get [Music] 37,500 and then everything at the bottom you're going to get 1,860 and when we divide that out we're going to get 20.1 16129 and so forth we're going to round to the nearest hundredth so whenever we do that we get [Music] 20 six so this is in hours so I know I'm dealing with 20 hours okay but I need these little bit of leftover hours into minutes so we're going to take a little step further and do some dimensional analysis to f figure out how many minutes that actually is so 0.16 hours we know that 1 hour equals 60 minutes and when we multiply that out both top and bottom and divide we are going to get well when we multiply everything out we're going to get 9.6 and then you divide that's what we get and then we're going to round that to the nearest whole number which is going to give us 10 minutes so our answer is 20 hours and 10 minutes that is our infusion time now let's solve for the completion time so in order to solve for this we needed our infusion time which is what we just figured out and we need the actual start time which came from the problem and it told us we started it at 2215 which is 1015 p.m. on 4:14 so again we're just going to add and subtract super easy so we started at 225 and it needs to it's going to take 20 hours and 10 minutes to go in so we add that up we get 4225 we know that's not a time so we're going to subtract that from 2400 and when we do that we get 1825 hours so that is the time it's going to be completed so just for your knowledge you know that that's going to be 625 p.m. and we have went over into the next day so it's going to be 1825 on 45 and that's our answer okay so that wraps up this video if you'd like more practice on solving these type of problems I have a free quiz on my website that you can access via Link in the description below