Introduction

In nursing particularly, absolute competence is a must as patients’ welfare is directly connected to any action or decision that you take. Give the wrong dosage or medication and a patient can be killed. Naturally, this can have devastating consequences so it is absolutely crucial that you take all the precautions in keeping up to date and maintaining your skills.

Dosage calculations are no exception and the reported cases of medication errors on an annual basis is very high. Despite this, many nurses absolutely fear performing calculations of any sort! Why is this? Most likely because the calculations involve a knowledge of maths and maths can be a daunting task - especially if it has been a long time since you studied at school or university.

The reality of the situation however, is not as bleak as it often appears to nurses. To perform dosage calculations you really only need a very basic level of math skills. Basic means a level that really does not exceed primary school: fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios.

But how do you learn and maintain your skills in maths? Well there really are 3 ways:
1> Through a textbook
2> Using Software
3> Hiring a private tutor (which generally requires a lot of money)

1. Textbooks

Learning math from a textbook can be unsettling - often because it brings back memories of a screaming teacher throwing algebra problems in front of you while you anxiously try and avoid looking directly at them just in case they ask you to go to the front of the class and solve the problem in front of all your class mates!

Textbooks can also be notoriously dry and have their own limitations in terms of interactivity and efficiency of learning. They rarely account for people who don’t like (or can’t) read very well and have a limited range of questions.

2. Software

Software has a number of advantages - the main one being the fact that it offers an extremely interactive way to develop your skills without having to open a book. Questions are in the thousands, difficulty levels are included to cater for all skill levels and you receive instant feedback to your answers (without having to look at the back of a textbook for the answer). Further most features are only a simple click away. Repetitive practice suddenly isn’t such a dry chore but more of a personal challenge to beat your best score!

Most Software packages even cater for the computer phobic as they use large buttons and a simple “click on where you want to go system”. Before you know it your math and computer skills will be improving!

In a world in which computer are becoming general household items computer based education is slowly replacing textbook based methods for its many advantages.

3. Private Tutor

Probably best for the wealthy but you will still be referred to a textbook or computer program to develop your skills!

Sue Peters develops Nursing Dosage and Drug Calculations Software.

The Windows Indexing Service provides you with the ability to perform advanced searches on directories located on your computer and on shared directories on the network. The Indexing Service was introduced with IIS (Internet Information Services) and is now installed with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

The Indexing Service is not started by default on a Windows 2000 professional computer. If you want the Indexing service to start automatically, select "Start | Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools" and open the "Computer Management" application. In the left pane of the "Computer Management" window, select "Services", then in the right pane, right-click on "Indexing Service". The "Indexing Services Properties" dialog box will appear.

In the "Indexing Services Properties" dialog box, on the "General" tab select "Automatic" from the "Startup type:" drop-down list. Under "Service stautus:" click on the "Start" button. A flurry of hard disk activity may begin as the Indexing Service builds or updates the index. The Indexing service creates an index (also called a catalog) organized in a way that makes it quick and easy to search. The Indexing Service also records the documents properties, for example its date of creation and last modified date.

The Search application can be accessed by right-clicking on any folder and selecting "Search…" in the popup menu. You can search for file names or you can search for text within files using keywords, or phases. Queries can use wildcards (?, *) and boolean operators (AND OR and NOT). When a user searches an NTFS volume, the Indexing service will return in the results only the files the user has permission to see.

The documents created by most applications contain formatting and control information, for example a webpage contains html tags, a Word document contains rtf tags. The Indexing Service uses filters to extract the content from the formatting and control information. Documents with extensions for which filters are not installed will not be indexed by default. If you want to index everything, open the "Computer Management" application as described above, and select "Services …", then right-click on "Indexing Service" and select "Properties" in the popup menu. In the "Indexing Services Properties" dialog box which appears, on the "Generation" tab, check the checkbox next to "Index Files With Unknown Extensions".

The Indexing service is designed to run continuously and requires no maintenance. After it is setup, it will automatically update the index. When a file changes, the OS sends a change notification to the Indexing Service, causing it to update the index. Folders on remote computers are scanned periodically.

The Windows Indexing Service uses a fair amount of disk space (approximately 30% the amount of the original files). If the shared directories on the network are large, it can consume a considerable portion of the computer’s memory and processor cycles. There are several options for configuring the Indexing Service to improve performance.

To configure the Indexing Service select "Start | Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools" and open the "Computer Management" application. In the left pane of the "Computer Management" window, click the plus sign next to "Services and Applications", then right-click on the "Indexing Service" icon. In the popup menu, select "All Tasks | Tune Performance". The "Indexing Service Usage" dialog box will appear.

The "Indexing Service Usage" dialog box provides three radio button options that let Windows set the Indexing Service Performance for you; "Used often", "Used occasionally", and "Never Used". If you want to provide your own custom setting, set the "Customize" radio button and click on the "Customize…" button. The "Desired Performance" dialog box will appear.

The "Desired Performance" dialog box contains two slider controls. The "Indexing" slider control sets how quickly the catalog will be updated. Adjust it to the left to reduce the amount of system resources used to update the catalog. The "Querying" slider control sets how quickly search results will be returned. Adjusting it to the left will reduce the amount of system resources used, but search results will take longer to return.

You can also control the Indexing Service by configuring the specific folders to be indexed. When you click on the "Indexing Service" icon in the "Computer Management" window, the right pane should list a catalog named "System". When you double-click on a catalog, you will find three folders, "Directories", "Properties", and "Query The Catalog".

Note: If Internet Information Server (IIS) is installed on your computer, you should also see a catalog named "Web". The Web catalog scans the C:Inetpub directory.

To add a folder to be indexed, right-click on the "Directories" folder and select "New | Directory" in the popup menu. In the "Add Directory" dialog box that appears, enter the path of the new directory. To remove a folder, left-click on the "Directories" folder to display the list of directories in the right pane. Then left-click on a directory and select "Delete" in the popup menu.

Copyright(C) Bucaro TecHelp.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

About The Author

Stephen Bucaro

To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp.