5.7 Conversions – Nursing Skills – 2e

Ounces to MillilitersWhen caring for patients, nurses often need to convert between ounces and milliliters. Although these equivalencies are typically memorized, let’s start with a simple problem of converting ounces to milliliters to demonstrate the technique of dimensional analysis.Practice Problem #1: Ounces to MillilitersA patient drank an 8 ounce can of juice. The nurse must document the intake in milliliters. How many milliliters of juice did the patient drink?Here is an example of how to solve this conversion problem using dimensional analysis.1. Identify the unit being solved for as the goal. In this example, we want to convert the patient’s oral intake from ounces to milliliters, so we are solving for milliliters (mL): 2. Set up the numerator in the first fraction to match the desired unit to be solved. In this case, we want to know how many milliliters should be documented, so mL is placed in the numerator. To complete the fraction, we add information already known. In this e...