Apparently, Math is a very dominant tool in healthcare delivery. Mathematics can address various healthcare problems, which enhances efficiency in healthcare delivery by enabling care givers to avoid medical errors and predict health outcomes with certainty. Mathematical solutions offers reliable information and calculations that safeguards, diagnose, and take care of varied healthcare issues. They entail the understanding and usage of medical tools, units of measurements and formulas. There are various healthcare problems that would necessitate the usage of mathematical solutions like diagnosis, dispensing medications, surgeries, waiting time for admission, and occupancy in a health facility (Raines, 2017). The paper refers to two hypothetical situations to indentify and demonstrate healthcare problems with mathematical solutions and their relevance to the practice.
Apparently, it is important for caregivers to ascertain that all patients get the right amount of dosage to avoid medical problems and ensure effectiveness of the prescribed medicine. Dosage is a very sensitive issue and hence the need to guarantee the right dosage for both adults and children. The first hypothetical situation relates to dosage of dispensing medication in a health facility. A nurse in Miami was aware of the correct drug dosage for an adult suffering from Malaria (500 mg). However, he had a young Malaria patient by the name Marcus. But, he did not know the right dosage to administer to the child suffering from Malaria. Marcus was 10 years old. In this case, the nurse had to rely on a mathematical solution to address the dosage problem. Specifically, he used the Young’s Rule that could certainly define the right dose for Marcus.
Young’s Rule asserts that we can get the right child’s dose by dividing the child’s age in years by the child’s age in years plus 12 then multiply the result with the adult dosage as demonstrated in the equation below.
Child’s Dose = (Child’s Age in years/Child’s Age in years + 12) x Adult Dose
To know Marcus’ dose, the nurse used the Young’s rule entirely. He got 500 mg of the malaria drug. He then divided the child’s age in years by the child’s age in years plus 12. In this case, the math execution of the result was 10/ (10+12) =10/22=0.4545. He then multiplied the result with the adult dose, which was 500 mg of the malaria drug. The resultant mathematical computation was 0.4545*500=227mg. As such, he got the right dosage for administering to Marcus. Ideally, it is important to practice the Young’s Rule practice since it guarantees the right dosage for patients of all ages (Raines, 2017).
Another hypothetical situation that demonstrates the use of mathematical solutions for health problems related to waiting time for admission in a Florida public hospital. The situation necessitated the use of a queuing model to establish the average waiting time for admission. Maureen sought to know the average waiting time for admission before transferring her ailing husband from another hospital. The nurse in charge sought the assistance of the queuing model as stipulated in the Queuing Theory that studies waiting lines (Foster, Hosking, & Ziya, 2010).
The nurse established that the hospital has 63 beds.
He also established that 42 beds were for male patients and 21 for female patients.
In establishing the average wait time, he divided the 42 beds by 7
As such, he established and informed Maureen that the average wait for admission at the hospital is 6 days. Apparently, this example is important in practice since it would equally inform policy makers on waiting problems with a view of finding solutions by establishing the connection between arrival rate, capacity, and waiting times at health facilities (Foster, Hosking, & Ziya, 2010).
- Foster, E. M., Hosking, M. R., & Ziya, S. (2010). A spoonful of math helps the medicine go down: an illustration of how healthcare can benefit from mathematical modeling and analysis. BMC Med Res Methodol, 10 (60).
- Raines, C. (2017). How to Use Math in Health Care Careers. Chron.