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Table 1 Types of exercises included in the analysis

From: Where do nursing students make mistakes when calculating drug doses? A retrospective study

Year 1

Clinical case of an adult patient in which students must calculate the dose of a prescribed drug from the stock available. They also have to calculate the rate at which the drug should be administered.

Year 2

Written exam comprising 10 calculation exercises, as follows:

1) Unit equivalences (theoretical); 2 and 3) basic dose calculations; 4) calculation requiring unit conversion; 5) dose calculation involving a percentage; 6) dose according to patient’s weight; 7) drug concentration over time; 8) total infusion time, taking into account the maximum flow rate; 9) volume of diluent, taking into account the maximum concentration; 10) infusion rate.

Exercises 6, 8, and 9 referred to a pediatric patient, while the remainder concerned adults. With the exception of exercise 1, all the questions were formulated using standard technical language.

Year 3

Four exercises distributed across two exams:

Clinical case of an adult critical patient: 1) the calculation involves maintaining a prescribed IV dose for a different drug concentration and infusion rate.

Clinical pediatric cases: 2) calculation of IV dose based on patient’s weight and with unit conversion, plus calculation of infusion rate; 3) calculation of oral medication based on patient’s weight; 4) calculation of IV dose based on patient’s weight and with unit conversion, plus calculation of infusion rate and concentration.