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A nurse is caring for a 4-year-old child and receives the following prescription: ceftriaxone IV, 100 mg/kg/day q 12 hours.

The medication on hand contains 40 mg/mL and the child weighs 40 lbs. The medication is mixed in 100 mL of normal saline and administered via IVPB over 1 hour with microdrip tubing. Calculate the amount of medication to be administered per dose and calculate the drip rate (round to the nearest whole number).

User Wong Tat Yau
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1 Answer

14 votes
14 votes

Answer:

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the amount of medication to be administered per dose, we need to first convert the child's weight from pounds to kilograms. To do this, we divide the weight in pounds by 2.2, which gives us a weight of 18.2 kilograms.Next, we multiply the child's weight in kilograms by the dosage of 100 mg/kg/day to get the total daily dosage of ceftriaxone: 100 mg/kg/day * 18.2 kg = 1820 mg/daySince the medication is to be administered every 12 hours, the dosage per dose is half of the total daily dosage, or 1820 mg/day / 2 = 910 mg/dose.Now we need to calculate the volume of the medication to be administered. To do this, we divide the dosage in milligrams by the concentration of the medication in milligrams per milliliter: 910 mg / 40 mg/mL = 22.75 mLFinally, we can calculate the drip rate by dividing the volume of the medication by the length of the infusion in hours and converting the result to drops per minute: (22.75 mL / 1 hour) * 60 minutes/hour = 1365 drops/minute. Rounding to the nearest whole number, the drip rate is 1366 drops/minute.

User Craig Russell
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