Education Commons^™

Session D-2: Don’T Overdose The Patient: A Unit Conversion Literacy Project, Gary M. Baker, David Anim-Addo, Patrick Young

Professional Learning Day

General chemistry for non-science majors is often a prerequisite course for students pursuing degree programs in allied health fields, such as nursing. A core nursing skill is medicine management, which includes correctly calculating drug dosage volumes administered by I.V. or injection. Such calculations are nothing more than general chemistry problems involving concentration units and dilution. Our data show, however, that more than 90% of students lack this skill after taking a traditional general chemistry course. This presentation will focus on documenting this curricular gap and how we, as teachers, can address it.