Pediatric rounding rules

Nursing Students Student Assist

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Yes I'm new nursing student and I'm in dosage calculation class. I'm working through some pediatric math involving weight based problems in some text it shows to round KG to nearest tenth and others to nearest hundredth I'm curious which is correct? Also for some pediatric oral liquid medication in some text the final answer is rounded to nearest tenth of an ML and and other text rounded to nearest hundredth of an ML which is correct?

Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.
Ok that's I just find it odd there isn't just a standard way it should be done everywhere

Real world:

Most syringes will only have markings to then 1/10th of an ml. Pretty tough to accurately dose more specifically than that. Likewise, its difficult to accurately give 1/5th of a tablet. (Yes I have seen that ordered.)

As for weight, infant scales measure to 3 decimal points. Bed scales usually measure to just one decimal point. I would use whatever amount of data I had (so use as many decimal points as the scale will give you).

School world:

Best to check with your instructor, who may want non-real-world. When in doubt, use every decimal possible and then round at the end if necessary.

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At my facility, all 1 mL oral/enteral syringes are indexed with 0.1, 0.05, and 0.01 mL index lines.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Moved to nursing student assistance

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Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.
At my facility, all 1 mL oral/enteral syringes are indexed with 0.1, 0.05, and 0.01 mL index lines.

Good catch, chare. I had a brain fart about 1 ml syringes!

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does the rounding volume for medication administration apply to pediatric the same as adults? Because I've seen in some dosage calculation books it asks that pediatric medication volume be rounded to the hundredths place. I find that hard to do when the only syringe able to measure hundredths of a ml is a 0.5 or 1 ml syringe. If the dose is say 1.48 ml it would require you to use more than 1 syringe to administer that amount

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Hi I'm a clinical pharmacy student,my thesis is about rounding practices in peadiatrics. I would like to have some examples of rounding in your practice, and the references that I should seek to help me in my thesis.

Thanks in advance.

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