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.
Mathematics 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.