Three hours on gtt/min and mL/hr. The formula is free everywhere and we give it away too. What you are paying for is executing it correctly, quickly, on a set whose drop factor you have not checked, at three in the morning.
Most people who lose marks on drip rate questions understand the formula perfectly. Ask them at a desk, unhurried, and they get it right. The failure is not comprehension. It is execution under time pressure on equipment they did not choose, and it is a very specific and very fixable weakness.
This course exists because that weakness has a shape. Nurses freeze on gtt/min and not on mL/hr, because a pump does the arithmetic and a roller clamp does not. They forget to convert hours to minutes. And they reach for a remembered shortcut without checking whether it applies to the set in their hand, which produces an answer that is confidently and precisely wrong.
Medication Safety and Dosage Calculation answers how much. This course answers how fast. If you cannot yet set up a dose problem and work it through, take Medication Safety first. This one assumes you can, and spends its time on rates, tubing and the clock instead. They are a sequence, not alternatives.
Here they are, worked, on this page, free. A course that sold you a formula you can find in thirty seconds would deserve the scepticism.
Two things in those boxes are worth more than the formulas. The first is that the gravity answer is rounded up to a whole drop, because tubing cannot deliver two thirds of a drop, while the pump rate is entered exactly as programmed. The second is that the working is laid out so a second person can check it. Both are assessed.
Every one of these falls out of the long formula. We teach the derivation, then the shortcut, then a set of problems where reaching for the wrong one gives a wrong answer you will feel certain about.
| Tubing | Shortcut | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| 60 gtt/mL | gtt/min equals mL/hr, one to one | The drop factor and the 60 minutes in an hour cancel exactly |
| 15 gtt/mL | Divide mL/hr by 4 | 60 divided by 15 is 4 |
| 10 gtt/mL | Divide mL/hr by 6 | 60 divided by 10 is 6 |
| Any set | mL/hr × drop factor ÷ 60 | The general case all three of the above come from |
That last outcome is why this is a course and not a worksheet, and it is the reason it does not fold into the medication safety session.
| Min | Module | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Rate is not dose | What a rate actually is. mL/hr against gtt/min, pump against gravity, and which one your unit is going to hand you. |
| 20 | Units before rates | The conversions that break rate arithmetic. Time, mass, volume, and why cc and mL are the same thing but only one of them should be written down. |
| 25 | The two formulas, derived | Both built up so you can rebuild them rather than recall them. Worked in full, every time, in the checkable layout. |
| 25 | The drop factor | Where it comes from and how to read it off real packaging. Hands-on with 10, 15, 20 and 60 gtt/mL sets and one order across all four. |
| 10 | Break | |
| 25 | Shortcuts, and when not to trust them | Each shortcut derived, then used, then a problem set where the wrong shortcut produces a confidently wrong answer. |
| 20 | Against the clock | Mixed problem bank, timed, in the checkable layout, corrected in the room while you still remember your reasoning. |
| 20 | Setting it and counting it | Regulating a gravity set to target and counting drops across a full timed minute. Programming a pump. The pre-start double check. |
| 20 | Skills validation | Under observation, against the checklist below, which you receive when you book. |
| 180 | Total | Three hours |
What this course rests on. Every problem in this session uses invented medications and generic volumes, deliberately, so that nothing taught here can be carried to a bedside as a parameter. The number conventions taught, including the leading zero and the prohibition on trailing zeros, follow the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and its list of error-prone abbreviations and dose designations. The independent double check for high alert infusions is taught as ISMP describes it.
Your facility sets which infusions require an independent double check, which pumps you are certified on, and what tolerance a counted rate must fall within. Where its protocol differs from anything here, its protocol governs.
Free, about twenty minutes. Arrive having done these and the session starts at the drop factor instead of at the definitions.
