VALIDATION OF THE DOSAGE CALCULATION NEEDS OF REGISTERED NURSES IN ACUTE CARE SETTINGS.
Contributors: University of Akron.
Published: 1992
Number of pages: 220
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Health.
Description: The purpose of this study was to validate the types of calculations currently performed by the registered nurse and examine the experiences related to medication administration. This was done in order to determine content priorities and facilitate development of valid achievement tests--needed before research can examine ways to boost proficiency with dosage calculation. The research design was descriptive correlational. A 49-item instrument, the Medication Administration Questionnaire (MAQ), was developed and administered to the study sample. Cronbach alpha estimation of reliability of the instrument was.84.

A random sample of acute care institutions was drawn from Northeastern Ohio. The nine study sites included six general hospitals, two pediatric hospitals, and one adult specialty hospital. All sizes of hospital were represented. Subject response rate was 42%. The study sample, 534 registered nurses working in staff nurse positions, was composed of primarily white, middle-aged, females who worked full time.

Analysis of data included descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, canonical correlations, and ANOVA. Hypotheses were tested at the alpha level of.05, although alpha was adjusted to.0005 for correlations to account for multiple variables.

A modified unit dose system of medication administration was most commonly found medication distribution system and parenteral medications the type of route most often involved when calculation was required. Although most medications were ordered and provided in the metric system, nurses usually avoided computational conversion between different systems of measure by memorizing a few needed equivalents. Such conversion was necessary only occasionally for the household system and seldom for the apothecary system. Most, with the exception of pediatrics nurses, reported that computations encountered were frequently easy enough to perform without paper/pencil. When problems required measures beyond mental computation, the nurses usually used peers as a resource, but most also claimed to use a calculator. Significant differences were found among the nurses working in various clinical settings, in different size institutions, and using various care delivery systems for the number of patients to whom they administered medication and for the frequency of medication administered by the various routes. Confidence with calculation skills was high. Calculation skills used by nurses were prioritized in order of frequency of performance.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-07, Section: B, page: 3400.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON, 1992.

School code: 0003.