Teaching medical math to high school students is easy, if you relate it to the everyday life of a teenager.
Instructions
1. Determine why the high school students are learning medical math. This will help you figure out what they want to get out of the class.
2. Relate medical math to everyday objects and happenings in a teenager's life. For example, most teens have seen a bottle of pain reliever and a gallon of milk, have received a vaccination, and so on.
3. Make sure the high school students know that medical math is easy if you consider two things: the amount of medicine, and amount of stuff the medicine is in.
4. Show them two identical glasses of water. In one glass, put an antacid. In the other glass, put seven antacids. This will help explain to them that two identical medicine bottles, vials, or syringes, can have vastly different amounts of medicine in them.
5. Teach them that most medication is measured in cc's or milliliters (ml), and that both mean the same thing. To give them an idea of what a cc or ml is equal to, tell them five cc's or five ml's is the same as a teaspoon of liquid.
6. Have them do simple calculations first, such as "if I have to give someone 1 milligram of medicine, and I'm given a 5-cc vial that is labeled '5 milligrams per 5 cc's', how many cc's do I have to give them?" The answer is 1 cc.
7. Once they understand the relationship between amount of fluid and the concentration of medication, give them questions that require more difficult mathematical calculations.
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