Nurse - Fun Activities - Community and Health

Community and Health - NURSE

Nurse with Elderly Man

How to take a pulse

Primary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Personal and social capability

1. Use this video to learn how to take a pulse and then try it on yourself or a friend/family member.

How to Take a Pulse
https://youtu.be/W5K_HR6hxMY

2. Research what it a pulse is by looking at this resource from Kids Health

3. Explain to your family member what you know about your heart beat and pulse.

How to Bandage a Hand

Primary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Personal and social capability

1. In pairs, view this video https://youtu.be/TNQxlxjD5Kw to see how to bandage a hand.

2. Try out bandaging a hand of your partner.

3. Reflection

Reflection.

How did you go?

Practice makes perfect. How many times did you need to bandage your partner's hand to get it "perfect"?

Measuring Medicine - an essential part of nursing

Middle

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Numeracy

1. You are a practicing nurse at your town's local hospital in the emergency ward. As part of being a practicing nurse it is required that you assist in measuring out medicine for patients.

Your first patient is a 4 year old girl weighing 16.5 kgs. This child has been brought to the hospital with a very high temperature. The doctor tells you that you need to give her medicine to bring her temperature down.

If the bottle of medicine reads ‘0.6mL per kg’, how much medicine is needed?

2. After a discussion with the parent before administering the medicine it is found that the child has already been given 1 teaspoon of the same medicine at home before bringing her to the hospital in an attempt to lower her temperature.

You discuss this with the supervising doctor and he tells you that you need to administer the difference. How much medicine do you need to give to the child?

3. All nurses check and double check medicine measurement with their colleagues. With a partner, share your results. Are they the same? If not, why not?

Drug Calculations (submitted by Trevor Ianna, ACU)

Secondary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Numeracy

1. Drug calculations vary depending on whether you are dealing with liquid or solid medications, or if the dose is to be given over a period of time.

It is very important that you know how drug dosages are worked out, because it is good practice to always check calculations before giving medication, no matter who worked out the original amount.
It is far better to point out a mistake on paper than overdose a patient.

A range of tablets

a) Tablets
Working out dosage from tablets is simple.

Formula for dosage: (Total dosage required÷Dosage per tablet)=Number of tablets required

1. A patient needs 500mg of X per day. X comes in 125mg tablets. How many tablets per day does he need to take?

Fun Practice at Drug Calucalations

Teacher
Resources required:
1. Small sauce containers (take off lids) – at least 10 for the patients.
2. Containers for the individual lollies (each type of lolly to have their own container). Suggested lollies: Jellybeans; Sultana nuts; Smarties; Lifesavers; Liquorice Allsorts; TicTacs; and, Sourpatch.
3. To make the task more realistic, you can divide up the lollies into different dosages so the students have to be extra careful about which container they use.

Student Instructions: In groups of 3 students [one the observer; one the dispenser; and, one the checker], put the medications for each patient into the containers. The checker is to counter-sign that they concur with the dispenser’s calculations. The observer is to act like a supervisor – as another checker.

Fill out the following chart (here it is as a Word Doc).

Patient Name	Drugs Required	Stock Strength	Calculations	Counter Signature
Michael	25mg Jellybeanamine 125mg Smartiezine	10mg 25mg (blue) 50mg (yellow)
Baxton	60mg Smartiezine 1.25mg Jellybeanzine	15mg 500mcg
Sarah	250mg Sultanatrine 20g Lifesavertran	125mg 20g
Chris	1mg Tictacamine 2.4mg Sourpatchadrone	250mcg 600mcg
Nick	200g Jellybeanzine 250g Liquoricamine	50g 125g
Toni	10mg Tictacamine 500g Jellybeanamine	2.5mg 125g
Tran	1g Sultanatrine 0.5mg Sourpatchadrone	250mg 125mcg
Andrew	40mg Sultanatrine 62.5mcg Tictacamine	10mg 0.125mg
Kim	1.8mg Sultanatrine 250mg Tictacamine	600mcg 125mg
Yolande	1.2mg Liquoricamine 125mg Lifesavertran	600mcg 50mg
Yvonne	300mg Smartiezine 2.5g Sourpatchadrode	200mg 500mg
Rowena	37.5g Sourpatchadrode 250g Smartiezine	75g 100g (red) 50g (green)

b) Liquid Medicines

Liquid medicines are a little trickier to deal with as they will contain a certain dose within a certain amount of liquid, such as 250mg in 50ml, for example.

To work out the dosage, we use the formula:
(What you want ÷ What you’ve got) × What it’s in

Note: In order to use this formula, the units of measurement must be the same for ‘What you want’ and ‘What you’ve got’; i.e. both mg, or both mcg etc.

We need a dose of 500mg of Y. Y is available in a solution of 250mg per 50ml.