Calculation questions

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I'm new and trying to figure out some calculations for the NICU patient population. Could anyone help me?

For example, the patient is receiving 12mls of milk Q3H. IV+PO is 5.5ml/hr. What is the IV rate?

12ml/3h would result in a rate of 4cc/hr, but I'm not sure how IV+PO fits in and need some help putting this all together.

TIA!

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Specializes in Adult and pediatric emergency and critical care.

The idea of IV+PO is to keep from overloading the kidneys/placing the patient in fluid overload. In reality this is of course more difficult than your assignment would lead on as you would have to consider how much of the feed that patient is actually tolerating, especially since a fluid rate of 5.5 mL/hr is going to be for an infant somewhere in the 1500 gram range and will likely have less than ideal toleration of feeds.

If the patient was to tolerate the entire feed they would then be receiving 4mL of feed per hour, then 5.5 less 4 would be 1.5 mL/hr.

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Excellent! I thought so, but just wanted to make sure I understood. Thank you for your reply and insight!

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