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Why This Matters for Nursing: Most medication doses, lab values, and vital signs use decimals. A patient's temperature of 98.6°F, a dose of 0.25 mg, or a lab value of 3.7 mEq/L—you'll work with decimals daily.
Decimals are another way to represent fractions and parts of whole numbers. The decimal point separates the whole number from the fractional part.
| Ones | . | Tenths | Hundredths | Thousandths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | . | 0.1 | 0.01 | 0.001 |
In 3.458: - 3 = ones - 4 = tenths (4/10) - 5 = hundredths (5/100) - 8 = thousandths (8/1000)
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