Is Mathematics Important in Healthcare?

You may be wondering why nursing and medical students need to study mathematics as a part of their course. We thought that nurses, physicians and other health care professionals must only study clinical procedures, treatments, medicines, anatomy and physiology. But the truth is math is incorporated into the daily lives of the health care professionals. Doctors and nurses use math when they write prescriptions or administer medications.  Medical professionals use math when drawing up statistical graphs of epidemics or success rates of treatments.

MathematicsWe are aware that doctors write prescriptions for their patients for various sicknesses. These prescriptions show a particular medication and dosage amount.  Usually, medicines have recommendations for dosage amounts in mg (mg) per kilogram (kg).  Doctors need to determine the number of mg of medicine each patient will require, based on how much they weigh.  When the weight of the patient is just known in pounds, doctors have to convert that measurement to kilos and then compute the amount in mg for that prescription.  There’s a really large distinction between mg/kg and mg/pounds, so it’s imperative that doctors learn how to precisely convert.

Doctors should also figure out how a prescription can last. They must be able to determine how long the medication will stay in the patient’s body. This is important, because through this, the patient will be aware about the interval of the medication. This can figure out how frequently the individual must take their medication to be able to keep an adequate amount of the medication in the body.

Mathematics plays a vital role in medicine. Since people’s lives are involved, it is crucial that nurses and doctors be really accurate with their mathematical calculations.  Numbers will give information to doctors, nurses, as well as patients.  Numbers are very essential within the medical area. Math is a crucial player within the healthcare arena. Medical companies must obtain reliable data and information to avoid, identify and treat medical conditions. Mastery of the tools of health care as well as scientific calculations will provide an efficient and lucrative delivery of services and reduces the chance of medical mistakes that may lead to malpractices and tragedies. The existence of mathematics in the medical theory will assure everyone that our doctors and nurses are properly trained and accurate with their prescription and medication.

Mathematics in Nursing Schools

There is a huge need for nurses right now, due to the aging population and in response to the upgrade of the health care system in the country. There were 85,000 US jobs eliminated in November 2009 but that doesn’t include nurses, in fact hospitals still added 21,000 which compose mainly of nurses. There was a need to increase the production of nurses in every nursing school.

math-nursingMathematics is slightly included in the curriculum of most schools but there are some who require nursing students to take up basic to advance math subject. So what are these math subjects required in college nursing school?

Algebra is a math subject that is required by many nursing schools. This subject is already a follow-up since it was already taken in high school. This subject can be done in one semester. It already included pre-calculus and may be directed to calculus in the next semester. The college algebra is more on concepts of algebraic expression, line equations and polynomial functions. Though nurses are not required to compute formulas and equations to be able to attend a patient, algebra is still a good subject to help students with their basic computations and makes their brains active with numbers.

Another math subject required was statistics. This subject teaches nursing students to use complex formulas to organize numbers into usable expressions. In this subject uses health care scenarios to be able to relate it to nursing. Probability was the main concept taught in statistics. Statistics may help the nurse in solving and interpret numerical fact about a medication for a patient.

Many nursing schools also taught finite math. This subject includes many subjects before the subject calculus. Geometry, basic math, statistics or pre-calculus are included in this aspect. This is important for nursing students. They must be able to know how to compute dosages of medicines or conversion of basic units.

Mathematics is required in many courses even in nursing. It is because we deal with numbers most of the time. Nurses will be able to use their basic knowledge and principles of mathematics in their daily routine in the health care facility.