Infusion Pump - I feel stupid!

Nurses Medications

Published

I'm a new grad. Most of the piggyback meds to run in the infusion pump have the rate on them. I had one yesterday that did not. I feel stupid because I know I am making it more difficult than it should be. I had Levoquin 150mL to infuse for 90 minutes. What would the rate be? Thanks so much!

look up dimensional analysis, (cross-multiplying), I can throw that on a piece of paper during clinicals and it's so reliable and quick to decipher ml per hr or gtts per min. I LOVE IT! Also, I always check my maintenance fluids on each pt and check it in reference to their diagnosis to make sure their fluid rates are appropriate.

Specializes in Emergency Department.

I'm more of a ratio/proportion person as I'm just more comfortable with that method. I'm also able to keep track of the units involved so it's just easier for me to do. When dealing with a volume per hour type of question and the amount has to be infused over 90 minutes, I just divide the volume into thirds and multiply that by 2. I'm going to leave off the units for easier reading: 150/3=50x2=100. Therefore your 150mL over 90 minutes would be a rate of 100mL/hour. Sometimes it's not that easy... and when that happens, I just pull out a pen & paper and go to work. I also have an app that calculates this stuff for me and I found a bug in the program but since I know about the bug and I also know that the other parts of the program work perfectly well, I just make the conversion necessary to avoid the bug.

+ Add a Comment