Numeracy for midwives

By Christine Butenuth

This book is based on keywords provided by the Royal College of Midwives to help those who have to pass a numeracy test for midwives, viz. an ability to accurately manipulate numbers as applied to volume, weight, and length, including, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, use of decimals, fractions, and percentages. In fact there is more than that because the derivation and manipulation of concentrations are also needed. Readers are shown that they use many of the mathematical operations used in midwifery in everyday life and this reduces the “terror” of “doing the maths” to satisfy the requirements set by the NHS. For example readers will have used different currencies when abroad but when we think about what we do to use them we realise how these cannot be added or subtracted or multiplied of divided without transforming one to another (via the “exchange rate”). The same logic is used when changing length, volume, weight or concentrations into different units and different amounts needed in midwifery. By these examples the book deals with the manipulation of numbers, decimals, fractions and percentages and shows these concepts are known to most of us in other contexts; readers will find they have “done this before” (and so know they can do it) but in a different context. The work is divided into 25 short sections, each illustrated to assist comprehension. The text also deals with conversions; length, area, volume are all considered together with their units, and the conversion of these units. Through this it is possible to deal with concentrations. Worked examples are given including how an answer should be checked to ensure you have got the right result. The book also shows the reader what to consider when searching websites for units and why it is necessary to be careful which websites to use for conversions. The Second Edition has an additional section introducing the statistical handling of data that midwives may commonly encounter and to which they may be contributing from the factual data they record at birth (weight, height etc.).
Currently Manchester University uses this book for their course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookPartnership
• Release date: Mar 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9780955355837

Book preview

First Steps Publishing Ltd. (2011)

Second Edition 2015

First Steps Publishing Ltd., Unit 17, Hurlingham Studios, Ranelagh Gardens,

London SW6 3PA

Copyright © First Steps Ltd.

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ISBN 978-0-9553558-3-7

Dear Reader,

My name is Christine and I will attempt to guide you through physical and mathematical terminology and its usage.

I suggest you attempt to solve the problems yourself, so that you will practice what you have seen.

I do hope that this will be beneficial to you and that by working through this material you will acquire the tools needed for your chosen profession.

Should you feel that something you would have liked to have seen in this course was missing, please let me know and I will see what can be done about it.

My contact details are shown below.

Christine Butenuth

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Tel: [phone]

Below are two examples from the NHS list of examination questions; they are examples of what you might be faced with in your professional life:

•Q1: Penicillin has been prescribed to a patient. The amount he is to take by mouth (oral) is 375mg. But the package from which this amount is to be dispensed has only tablets of 125mg in it. How many of these tablets is the patient to be given?

•Q2: If the same patient has been prescribed 500mg but this time the penicillin is to be dispensed in a liquid form where 125mg of penicillin are to be found in 5ml of fluid how many milli-litres (ml) does the patient need to receive?

The following pages will show you how to find answers to these sorts of questions.

To start with we will be talking about money in the form of currencies.

I hope that by introducing many ideas this way you will soon appreciate how familiar you already are with many of these mathematical and physical topics. But you have probably never quite thought about things this way.

We will then continue our journey into length measurements, fractions, areas and volumes.

Having seen all this we will briefly touch on what a density is, how to define a force and what acceleration does to you, to name a few other topics, and to close we will talk very briefly about predictions, especially from graphs, and end by looking very briefly at statistics.

List of contents

Concept of quality and quantity

How much money is in your purse?

•Why is it important to be aware that both a quantity and a quality is needed?

•Points to remember

•How to work out a sum of different units in one currency for example

•Remarks on currencies

•Adding different currencies

•A general rule of conversion

•Converting different currencies

Length, area, volume

•Length measurement

•Fractions

– Rules for calculations with fractions

•Decimals

•Percentages

•Unit conversions

•Length, area, volume units

•Area determination

•Volume calculations

•General points to notice

•Experimental determination of a volume

Density, Force, acceleration

•Density

•Notes regarding related units

– Concentrations

•Prefixes

•Force

•Definition of a force

•Force (=weight) but there are many