HESI Chemistry: study guide

HESI Chemistry While chemistry may not seem relevant to nursing, it’s more applicable than you might think. Nurses must understand the use of the medication they are providing, the conversions, and they even need to understand how the medications work. Advancing your career into more specialized fields requires you to posses not only a basic understanding of chemistry, but perhaps organic chemistry, or physical chemistry as well. Having a solid foundation in chemistry is key to understanding how certain drugs interact, which directly affects patient outcomes. Here are some basic chemistry concepts you should understand in order to do well on the Chemistry section of the HESI exam: Units of Measurement Metric Volumes are usually measured in milliliters (ml) or cubic centimeters (cm3). 1 ml = 0.001 L 1 Liter = 1 cm3 e.g. 5 L = 5000 ml = 5000 cm3 Masses are usually measured in grams (g) or kilograms (kg), where 1 kg = 1000 g. The volume of 1 kg of water is approximately 1 L. So the volume of 1 g of water is roughly 1 L / 1000 = 1 ml or 1 cm3 . Lengths are commonly measured in meters (m), centimeters (cm), or millimeters (mm). Imperial Imperial units are less commonly used now, but you may need to convert from imperial to metric. Imperial units of volume are pints and gallons. Lengths can be given in inches, feet, yards, or miles and masses can be given in ounces, pounds, or stones. 1 gallon = 4.5 liters 1 liter = 1.75 pints 1 inch = 2.54 cm 1 foot = 30.5 cm