If a patient requires 1.5 g of a medication available in 300 mg tablets, how many tablets must the patient take?

To determine how many tablets the patient must take to achieve the required dosage of 1.5 g, it is first essential to convert grams to milligrams, since the medication is available in milligram dosages.

1.5 grams is equal to 1500 milligrams (since 1 gram equals 1000 milligrams).

Next, to find out how many 300 mg tablets are needed to reach 1500 mg, you would perform the following calculation:

[

\text{Number of tablets} = \frac{\text{Total required dosage in mg}}{\text{Dosage per tablet in mg}}

= \frac{1500 \text{ mg}}{300 \text{ mg/tablet}}

= 5 \text{ tablets}

]

Therefore, the patient needs to take 5 tablets to meet the required dose of 1.5 g (1500 mg). This reasoning confirms that the correct answer is 5 tablets, as the calculation accurately reflects the total dosage needed divided by the amount per tablet.

If the answer choices had included 5, that would be the right choice based on the calculations performed.