Skip to main content

Medication Math Basics: Working with Fractions - Video Lesson

Welcome back, everybody. This lesson explores how to do the math associated with the measurements we have discussed in other lessons on medication basics. Being able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions is applicable in many health care scenarios. As we cover in a separate lesson, the household measurement system is commonly used in the United States, including in health care settings. Household measurements are often expressed as fractions, so being able to solve problems with fractions is often necessary when working with these measurement units. As you may remember, fractions consist of a numerator, top number, and a denominator, bottom number. For example, in the fraction one half, one is the numerator and two is the denominator. Fractions describe how a whole is divided into a certain number of equal parts. The number of equal parts would be the denominator.