Medmath Qstn

[leah s]

Doctor orders NS 3000 ml per 24 hours as maintenance IV fluid. During day shift you have to hang two antibiotics, one is in a 100 ml bag to run over 30 minutes and the other is in a 250 ml bag to run over 45 minutes. During night shift you will have to hang two antibiotics, one is in a 100 ml bag to run over 30 minutes and the other is in a 250 ml bag to run over 45 minutes.

How many ml/hr should the maintenance IV fluid be running?

this is the qstn for my class.... im just wondering how I can go about this problem .. if they are asking the maintenance fluids ..should i just disgregard the antbx part and just do 3000/24 which would give me 125ml/hr ..soo confused..any help would be appreciated

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

In real practice, you would disregard the antibiotic volume and give maintenance fluid at the ordered rate. If the volume of antibiotics was significant, you could collaborate with the doctor to reduce the ordered amount of maintenance fluid.

But now, on to your question. There are several ways this could be interpreted. I'm honestly not sure which way your instructor wants you to go. Here's what I think. I think the question is suggesting you can't run the antibiotics while the maintenance NS is running. So you would calculate the total TIME that the antibiotics are infusing, and subtract that from the 24 hour time limit for the 3L of saline.

Example: Your antibiotics have to run over a total of 4 hours. That gives you 24-4= 20 hours to infuse the 3000mL of fluid. So your rate would be 3000mL/20hr = X mL/hr.