Question

The patient is to receive 1,000 mL of IVF over 8 hours. The IV set delivers 15 gtts/mL. The drip rate will be ______gtts/min. (round to the nearest whole number)

Answer 1

To find the IV drip rate in gtts/min for the patient, one should divide the total volume of IVF by the time in hours, multiply by the IV set's drop factor, and convert to minutes. For a 1,000 mL IVF over 8 hours with a 15 gtts/mL set, the drip rate is approximately 31 gtts/min.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question asks us to calculate the drip rate of an IVF (intravenous fluid) in gtts/min (drops per minute). To find the drip rate, we use the formula:

Drip Rate (gtts/min) = (Volume of IVF in mL / Time in hours) x (Drop Factor in gtts/mL) x (60 min/hour)

First, we'll find out how many mL per hour the patient is to receive. This is 1000 mL over 8 hours, which is 1000 mL / 8 hours = 125 mL/hour. Next, we'll multiply this by the IV set drop factor, which in this case is 15 gtts/mL. So, we have 125 mL/hour x 15 gtts/mL = 1875 gtts/hour. Finally, we convert this to drops per minute by dividing by 60, the number of minutes in an hour. This gives us 1875 gtts/hour / 60 min/hour ≈ 31 gtts/min.

Therefore, the IV drip rate should be set to 31 drops per minute, after rounding to the nearest whole number.