A medication order is for 1.5 g of a drug. If it is available in 500 mg tablets, how many tablets should be given?

To determine how many tablets to administer, it's important to first convert the prescribed dose from grams to milligrams since the available medication is in milligram tablets.

The order is for 1.5 grams of the drug. We know that 1 gram is equal to 1000 milligrams, so we can convert grams to milligrams as follows:

1.5 grams × 1000 mg/g = 1500 mg

Now we need to understand how many 500 mg tablets are needed to meet the 1500 mg requirement. To find this, we divide the total milligrams needed by the strength of each tablet:

1500 mg ÷ 500 mg/tablet = 3 tablets

Thus, the correct calculation shows that a total of 3 tablets of 500 mg each should be administered to fulfill the order of 1.5 grams.