Mathematical Concepts in Registered Nursing Career - Research Paper Example

Mathematical Concepts in Registered Nursing Career Concepts in mathematics serve a wide array of careers even, those not directly related to the field of mathematics. Borrowing from the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational outlook, this paper seeks to evaluate the duties of a registered nurse. It specifically aims at bringing out the relationship between the mathematical concepts explored this semester to these duties that registered nurses are charged with. Introduction According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, the career of a registered nurse involves the provision and coordination of patient care, education of patients and the public on various health conditions and provision of emotional support and advice to patients and their respective families at large. They would normally be stationed in hospitals, home healthcare service providers, physicians’ offices and in nursing care facilities. Before licensing, prospective registered nurses should have acquired relevant academic qualifications in approved nursing program ranging from diploma to bachelor’s degree. To further understand the roles played by registered nurses, it would be critical to examine their specific duties. Specific Duties of a Registered Nurse Borrowing from the registered nurses’ outlook as documented by BLS, nurses observe patients and record symptoms of patients and their medical histories. Patients’ medical histories serve to give indications of their current medical condition. By analyzing the patients’ medical histories, the nurse would in essence be considering the past statistics. The nurse would be majorly concerned with relative frequencies of past medical conditions. To effectively achieve this, these nurses would appreciate the important role played by measures of central tendencies including the median, mode and mean as documented by Meerschaert (214), in evaluating these historical observations. To make these numerical data useful to the registered nurse, there would be need to understand the concepts in probability and statistics so as to evaluate the chance and collect, organize, analyze and describe numerical data (Timmons, Johnson and McCook 318). These mathematical functions help organize these observations in a meaningful manner. BLS also notes that nurses operate and monitor some medical equipment. This therefore means that the nurses have the ability to perform diagnostic tests and analyze the results thereof. Probability and statistics mathematics finds key application in nursing in the diagnosis of medical conditions. To be particular, relative frequencies of observed phenomena would give crucial leads to diagnosis of existing medical conditions. As discussed by Timmons, Johnson and McCook (351), relative frequencies would show the frequency of each category, in this case the categories being the medical conditions. Higher frequencies of a particular pathogen could point out at the medical condition being a consequent of such. Probability being a study of random events helps nurses in diagnosis such that higher relative frequencies indicate a higher probability of recurrence of such medical conditions. In consultation with doctors and other available healthcare professionals, nurses set up the plans for the care of patients or advise on the existing plans. They teach the patients together with their families on ways of managing their injuries or illnesses. Since public health and home health nurses travel to the location of patients to deliver such services, they would appreciate the knowledge of statistics and probability in planning their schedule so as to effectively utilize their resources. To be specific, nurses would plan to visit their patients densely distributed in a region at a go so as to save on time and resources. In offering care, nurses also give medicines and treatments to patients as observed by BLS. The quantity and frequency of drug intake they prescribe referred to as dosage in nursing terminology would be determined by the distribution of pathogens in the patients’ tissues. The role of medication and treatment and care planning by nurses indicates the importance of knowledge in quantitative data and statistics. This means that nurses would find it useful to understand quantitative data mathematics in calculating the rightful dosage based on the pathogen load or determining the care plan to adopt in a given location based on the distribution of patients. Monitoring the progress of such care plans and treatment would need a nurse to keep data of the patients’ progress whose analysis gives information on the recovery path. Borrowing from linear and exponential functions in mathematics, the nurses would be able to approximate the recovery period based on the rate of action of the medication or treatment. While exponential rates involve a constant change in rate, linear functions give insights into constant change in equal amounts over time (Timmons, Johnson and McCook 140). According to BLS, registered nurses could sometimes be called upon to promote general health where they would be expected to educate the public on signs and symptoms warning of a disease. They run general blood drives, health screenings and immunization clinics among other programs. During these outreach programs, nurses make critical observations that would inform on the health of the visited regions. While qualitative data serves a role in such a case, quantitative data, commonly used in mathematics, makes the data more meaningful. Timmons, Johnson and McCook (368) differentiate quantitative from qualitative data noting that while qualitative data would consist of non-numerical categories, labels and attributes thus giving categorical or descriptive data, quantitative data refers to numerical data made up of counts or numerical data. As opposed to categorical data used in relatively smaller number of categories, quantitative data would be used when the categories are large in number so as to give the data distribution a good visual representation (Meerschaert 278). Therefore, quantitative data would be employed by nurses in these outreach programs and would be refined using measures of central tendency, dispersion and correlation to determine the prevalence of the observed medical condition in a given region. This would then inform on appropriate action to take. Conclusion This paper supports the fact that the mathematical concepts acquired during this semester play a critical role in effective execution of duties of a registered nurse, this being the chosen career outside the direct mathematics-related career path. Concepts on probability, statistics, quantitative data and linear and exponential functions serve an important role in ensuring that nurses make rightful diagnosis, give proper treatment and medication, follow up on the effectiveness of medication and respond appropriately to public health demands. Hence, mathematics serves as a foundational course in a wide range of careers. References Meerschaert, M. M. Mathematical Modeling. 4th ed. Waltham, MA: Academic Press, 2013. “Registered Nurses” Occupational Outlook Handbook. 2012 – 13 ed. US Dept. of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 29 Mar. 2012. Web. 4 May 2013. Timmons, Daniel L., Catherine W. Johnson and Sonya M. McCook. Fundamentals of Algebraic Modeling: An Introduction to Mathematical Modeling with Algebra and Statistics. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2010. Read More