Pediatric dosage calculation rounding rules

[Jane24007]

I'm a new nursing student and I'm taking dosage calculation next semester. I was looking over some pediatric dosage calculation questions by using weight. When you you are calculating oral liquid medication and IV medication is the volume to be administered rounded to the nearest 10th ml if it's greater than 1 ml to administer say like 1.35 ml of Tylenol for a child rounded to 1.4 ml or do you administer 1.35 ml? I also see in some books pediatric weights are converted from lbs to kg rounded to nearest 10th kg and some literature says round to nearest hundredth kg?

[chare]

Your program should provide rounding rules for use during class.

In my practice, I don't round until after I complete all calculations and have my final answer. When I do round, I typically round to either the nearest hundredth if using a 1 mL syringe or syringe pump; the nearest tenth if using either a 3, 5, or 10 mL syringe or IV pump; or nearest mL if using a 20 or 60 mL syringe.

[Jane24007]

Ok I was wondering if there was just a standard set of rounding rules for pediatric dosage calculations

[Jane24007]

Some text I was reading had pediatric oral doses rounded to the nearest hundredth ml for volumes over 1 ml and some text says to round to nearest tenth with volumes over 1 ml so I'm just confused! What is the correct way in the real world

[chare]

I base my decision on how the syringes are gradated. At my facility 1 mL syringes are gradated to 0.01 mL; 3, 5, an 10 mL syringes to 0.1 mL; and 20 and 60 mL syringes to 1 mL.

[Guest219794]

I base my decision on how the syringes are gradated. At my facility 1 mL syringes are gradated to 0.01 mL; 3, 5, an 10 mL syringes to 0.1 mL; and 20 and 60 mL syringes to 1 mL.

This is a good real world answer.

The OP want's to know how to do well on a test.

AFAIK, there is no universally accepted rule. But, your school should have something available and concrete. And, that would supersede any rule, even if it was accepted by every major organization in the world.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

As far as weights go, for older children the standing scale we had typically weighed to 0.1 kg and the infant scale to 0.001 kg. We didn't round infant weights. If the scale read 2.593 kg, the documented weight/the weight used for calculations was 2.593 kg.

The lack of rounding in the computer system got annoying when a resident entered, say, a tylenol order for a child who weighed 2.593 kg and then just clicked the button for 15 mg/kg and the order was 38.895 mg of Tylenol because who can measure that? To answer your question, in that case Tylenol is 32 mg/mL and I would round 1.215 mL to 1.2 mL because it's not possible to measure out 0.215 of an mL.

It was worse when it was an older child who weighed like 21.5 kg and they ordered 322.5 kg. Um, how about 325 mg since that's the size of the tablet?

[chare]

Deleted.