Help with dosage calculation

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Specializes in Medicine.

Hello everyone!!!

Can someone please help me solve a dosage calculation problem.

Order: 1000 ml Ns IV for 24 hrs. Penicillin G 1,000,000U IVPB in 100 ml, 0.45% NaCl to run for 30 minutes. The drop factor is 10 gtt/ml. At what rate should the IV pump be set?

I really need someone to help, I have been trying to solve this problem almost all day, and I still can't find the way to solve it.

Thanks

Specializes in MED/SURG STROKE UNIT, LTC SUPER., IMU.

I think you may have a lot of extra information in there. Why would you need a drop factor if you are using a pump? Also, are you calculating the rate for the normal saline or for the piggy back or both? I would drop the drop factor and see what you come up with.

Specializes in SRNA.

If you're using an IV pump for a rate, you can forget about the drop factor. It looks to me that it just wants to know what rate, in mL/hour, would you need to set the pump to give 1000mL of NS over 24 hours and what rate would you need to set the pump to give 100mL of PCN over 30 minutes.

This should help.

you have some distractors in your problem...you just need to think about 1000ml over 24 hours as your primary and 100ml over 30 minutes as your piggy back(secondary).

100ml over 30 minutes is 200ml/hr. for the secondary.

1000ml over 24hrs= 41.666666666666667. depending on how they want you to round it would either be... 41.67... 41.7... or 42 ml/hr for the primary.

forgive my being tired and not going through the whole scenario. first thing to do is find out what you need and weed out what you don't. you are using a pump and they are not asking for gtts/min so the drop factor is moot.

hope it helps,

frank

Forget the drop factor. For primary infusion of NS just divide 1000 by 24. For IVPB PCN infusion see equation below: (I hope I get this right or I'm gonna look dumb lol)

60 minutes x 100 cc

------------- ----------

1 hour 30 minutes

Cancel out minutes then reduce. 30 goes into itself once and into 60 twice. Then multiply 2 by 100 and you get 200cc/hr. Run the 100cc bag at 200cc an hour and it will go in over 30 minutes.

Hope this helps!

Just to clarify in my above post 60 minutes goes over the 1 hour and 100cc goes over the 30 minutes, they are 2 diff parts of the equation.

Specializes in Medicine.

Thanks everyone for your help!!!!

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