A physician prescribed 5mg/kg q day of a drug for a patient that weighs 132 pounds. How many 100mg tablets will be needed for a 2-week prescription?
I will be happy to critique your thinking.
I get about 40 tabs
To calculate the number of 100mg tablets needed for a 2-week prescription, we need to follow a few steps.
Step 1: Convert the patient's weight from pounds to kilograms.
Since the prescribed dosage is given in milligrams per kilogram, we need to convert the weight from pounds to kilograms. The conversion factor is 1 pound = 0.453592 kilograms. So, the patient's weight in kilograms is:
132 pounds * 0.453592 kg/pound ≈ 59.874 kg (rounded to three decimal places)
Step 2: Calculate the total daily dosage.
The prescribed dosage is 5mg/kg. So, we multiply the patient's weight in kilograms by the dosage:
59.874 kg * 5 mg/kg = 299.37 mg/day (rounded to two decimal places)
Step 3: Calculate the total dosage for a 2-week prescription.
A 2-week prescription consists of 14 days. So, we multiply the daily dosage by the number of days:
299.37 mg/day * 14 days = 4191.18 mg (rounded to two decimal places)
Step 4: Calculate the number of 100mg tablets needed.
Divide the total dosage by the strength of each tablet to determine the number of tablets needed:
4191.18 mg / 100 mg/tablet ≈ 41.91 tablets (rounded to two decimal places)
Since we cannot have fractional tablets in this case, we round up the number to get the final answer:
42 tablets (rounded to the nearest whole number)
Therefore, you would need 42 tablets of 100mg each for a 2-week prescription.