Math in Pharmaceuticals

400 Words2 Pages
Everyday, people go into pharmacies to request medicine. Meanwhile, there are children in school who dream of becoming pharmacists, and wondering, “When will I ever use this math in a pharmacy?” Math is used in various ways in the world of antibiotics. Knowledge of ratios and proportions, common percentages, decimals, fractions, and conversions are a few of the mathematic concepts required to excel in the business of drugs. Therefore, students will most definitely use all sorts of arithmetic if they decide to enter a career of medicine. Each work day, dispensing chemists must decide how much of a dose to give to a patient. Proportions are routinely used in dosage calculations. For example, one might need to decide ‘how many mL of the drug ibuprofen are present in 10 milliliters (10 mL) when there are 20mg of ibuprofen in each mL?’ (Blackburn 3). Without knowing how to do this, customers could, at any moment, literally ‘drop dead’. Knowing about common percentages, decimals, and fractions is extremely important in chemistry, as it is in any science or math subject. “As a technician, you work in a very fast paced environment. It would be very helpful to have certain fraction and decimal equivalents memorized so that you can quickly make these switches when necessary.”, says Jeff Blackburn (6) To those struggling, apathetic-towards-fractions pupils who are thinking, “I’ll never need to know how to change these decimals”, those in the field of medicine are constantly using the knowledge that they learned in grade school. Finally, conversions are another type of math used in a pharmacy. Compare it to making a cake: if one adds two liters of milk instead of cups, the pastry would be completely ruined, or strange tasting at the very least. With pharmaceuticals, the dosage and unit is much more important, due to the fact that the buyers’ life is in the dealers’ hands.

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