Latoya Smith has been a practicing Registered Nurse for 15 years, and saw a need to help nursing students with correctly doing their medication dosage calculations in school.
As a result, Smith, who works as a RN in Tulsa, wrote an ebook “The Trap Guide To Nursing Dosage Calculation with Latoya, RN,” that shows nursing students how to break down and solve dosage calculation problems and pass dosage calculation class.
“I was helping out in a student nurse Facebook group, and I saw they were struggling with dose calculation,” she said. “A lot of our Facebook students were failing and not being able to go on to become nurses because they were failing this critical thing because you need to know how to calculate dose appropriately. Nursing costs students a lot of money and time. It is costing us bodies in the nursing profession. We need these people to graduate and come to work.”
Smith said her book has been successful in helping nursing students.
“It has done really well, and has helped hundreds of students to pass dosage calculations,” she said. “One thing they kept asking for was an app to practice anytime, anywhere. Over the last couple of years, I have been working to develop that. This is all something that we can benefit from, both practicing nurses and nursing students.”
Smith worked with app co-founder Carmen Bourlon on developing the Dose Calc App which will be available starting May 6
“I do all of the questions and the video for the app, and she is the one who actually builds it,” Smith said. “We are really excited about it, and I think nursing students will be excited about it and be successful in nursing school. This is one of the most crucial and foundational things you need to have to be a successful nurse. You can practice dosage calculation anytime and anywhere with this app.”
Smith attended and graduated from Ponca City Senior High School. She graduated from Northern Oklahoma College with a Degree in Applied Science in Nursing in 2008. While Attending Northern Oklahoma College, Smith was on the Dean’s Honor Roll, the President’s Honor Roll, and a member of Phi Theta Kappa. She was the Nurse of the Day at the Oklahoma State Legislature in March of 2020.
Smith said she hopes the new app will help improve the skills of practicing nurses and nursing school students.
“My goal is to have a safer healthcare place, a better world for our patients, and a better world for nurses,” she said. The goal is to help make patients safer and improve medication safety.”
Smith is hopeful the new app will be as successful as her book in helping nursing students passing their dosage calculation classes.
“We really need those signups because the more signups we have it will really push the app in the right direction to show there really is a need for this app, and it will help us secure funding to keep building this thing,” she said.
For more information visit https://dosecalcapp.com/
