Rounding oral liquid medication and IV/IM

[Jamesryan]

I'm a nursing student taking a dosage calculation class this summer. I was working some pediatric weight based problems for oral liquid medications example a 2 year old patient with fever is ordered Tylenol 15mg/kg the patient weighs 12.3 kg and amount of Tylenol available is 160mg/5 ml how many ml would you give. My answer came out to be 5.765 ml but I it be rounded to 5.8 ml. Or should you round it to 5.77 ml? Also with IM and IV pediatric medications should they be rounded to the tenths place?

[chare]

My apologies. Our 5 and 10 mL leur lock syringes are graduated in 0.2 mL. Our 6 mL Enfit enteral syringe is graduated in 0.1 mL.

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

I can only think of a handful of oral meds I'd be drawing up in two syringes to get as accurate a dose as possible Digoxin is one, captopril and clonidine are a couple more. For most others, the difference between 0.1 and 0.2 mL isn't going to make a significant difference.

[Jamesryan]

So if a pediatric oral medication dose for just say an antibiotic was to administer 5.3 ml how you administer that amount?

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

I'd use a 10 mL oral syringe and put the bottom of the plunger halfway between 5.2 and 5.4. It'll be close enough.

[humerusRN, BSN]

I had to give a medication last week, where my dose ended up being 0.04ml. I was like dear LORD how am I even going to make sure that all of this sucker gets out of the syringe tip. lol.

Rounding, like everyone else has stated previously - in the real world it will depend on the med. If the dose of tylenol comes out to be 4.1ml, I am going to be giving 4. If I am taking care of a kid on a methadone/ativan wean - I am going to make sure I get it precise. As for your first example, I would have rounded to xx.8

[Jamesryan]

I've read some literature for pediatric oral doses that say volume greater than 1ml round to the hundredth and others say round to the tenth. Also some literature tells you to round child's weight to nearest tenth kg before beginning calculation and other literature states round weight to the hundredth kg. It just seems confusing to me