Drawing up liquid medication

[staceywilliams]

If I need to administer liquid Tylenol and the dose to be administered is 9.7ml how would you correctly administer this dose? Would you have to use two syringes?

[Okami_CCRN, BSN, RN]

I would draw up the medication with a 10ml syringe, there are .1ml markings so it would not be difficult to draw up the full 9.7ml dose.

[staceywilliams]

I thought 10ml syringes are measured in 0.2 ml increments?

[brownbook]

Two (opposing) answers.

1) You should always use syringes made for PO meds, not regular syringes that could be used for IM or IV doses. This prevents someone making a med error by giving a PO med IV or IM. My quick look on Google Images showed 10 ml syringes for PO meds that had 0.1 increments.

2) OK, so you only have regular syringes, and they are marked in 0.2 ml increments. For a medication like PO tylenol 0.1 ml is not going to make a difference. Even if you have 0.1 increments you will probably always be a little over or under the mark on the syringe.

[candacern59217]

Oral liquids should only be given in oral syringes. Not IV syringes. Ask pharmacy, they usually have ones that can do the precise dosing

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

Preferably you should be using oral syringes that have the 0.1 mL marks for more precise dosing. If you do not and your patient is going to be getting sufficient volume that you need a 10 mL syringe, being off by less than 0.2 mL isn't going to make a difference. If I need to be super accurate in the dosing, then I'll have pharmacy do the measuring. They have the equipment for the purpose.

[Crystal-Wings, LVN]

Use a 10 mL syringe. If you don't have that, use 2 syringes.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I thought 10ml syringes are measured in 0.2 ml increments?

There are 10 mL syringes that have 0.1 mL markings and 10 mL syringes that have 0.2 mL markings. If yours has 0.2 mL markings, 9.7 mL is halfway between 9.6 and 9.8. Any discrepancy is negligible. Honestly at that point, tylenol is 160 mg/5 mL. The calculated dose is 310.4 mg. Tylenol is dosed 10-15 mg/kg. If that's not the ceiling dose and the child can swallow pills, I'd ask the provider to change the order to 325 mg. Who wants to take almost 10 mL of liquid tylenol?