Medication Help

[blueeyedgoose]

I would surely appreciate it if someone would help me with this medication question. The order reads give 100g of magnesium sulfate in 500ml of Lactated Ringers solution with an infusion controlled device at the ordered rates: Loading dose- initial bolus of 6g over 30 minutes; maintainance dose 3g/hour. How long will it take to infuse the entire medication?

Thank- you in advance...Debbie

[Scrubz]

If your just looking for total infusion time...

100mg total to be deliverd..

- 6g bolus deliverd during first 30 minutes, so 100g - 6g = 94g after initial bolus

- 3g/hour to finish it off... So you have 94g more to give at 3g/hour... You can figure that giving 94g at 3/hour is going to infuse pretty slow, so you automatically know that your answer is going to be a large amount of time.. Because every hour you only subtract 3g off the total 94g

- So if you have 94g left to give at 3g/hour, you can just divide 94 by 3 and put it at per hour. So 94/3 = 31.3... So the answer would be 31.3 hours, or about 31 hours and 20 minutes.. Then add the 30 minutes it took to infuse the initial bolus and it puts you at right around 31 hours and 50 minutes

I think that's right anyway, I'm really rusty on my math but that seems about right.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

Yes, the calculations are correct and much faster than doing it by dimensional analysis.