New York, New York – The American Association of Poison Control Centers says that children may be at risk with a spoonful of medication.
Confusion on Measurement Directions
The American Association of Poison Control Centers says that more than 10,000 individuals, contact the poison centers every year. These people are too afraid that they have been given a strong dose of medicine. The majority of the report also indicates confusion on measurement directions. About ¾ of the callers are parents who are giving an urgent care and administering medicine to children below 12 years old. They are baffled by the measurement options such as teaspoons, tablespoons, droppers, milligrams, and milliliters.
Professional Recommendation
Professional associations begin a recommendation that a uniform unit will be used for liquid medicines, that is the milliliter. The guidelines appear, although Americans have seemingly unwilling and frightful in trying metric measurements. Some urgent care clinics havealso backed up such long-held fears among individuals. A spoonful of medication have become the easiest measurement, avoiding the metric system, says Dr. Daniel Budnitz, Medication Safety Program Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Traditional assumptions indicate that Americans are not comfortable with the metric system, relying on a teaspoon measurement instead.
New Study on Dosed Medications
A new study on dosed medications was conducted by the Pediatrics Department of the Penn State University College of Medicine. The study found out that there were lesser errors among parents who administered medications in milliliters than those who used teaspoons and tablespoons. There were 287 participants in the study, parents who had just administered medication to their children at the urgent care clinic and emergency departments of Manhattan and Brooklyn hospitals. The research found out that 40% had not measured correctly, resorting to imprecise utensils like a soup spoon. Parents who measured a spoonful of medication were more likely to commit mistakes compared to those who used milliliters.
Proper Medicine Administration
Dr. Ian M. Paul, a professor at the same university and a co-investigator of the study emphasized that milliliters are the exact measurement. He also claimed that kitchen spoons are less precise, considering their variation in sizes that could lead to overdose, and could be followed by a need for an urgent care near me facility. Teaspoons, tablespoons, and even dosing spoons could be significant errors, most especially when it comes to antibiotics. Under-dosing and overdosing a child may create serious concerns and harmful consequences. Parents are not the only ones to blame due to inconsistent information. Hence, a standard unit in prescription labels along with appropriate dosing devices has been strongly recommended by different agencies so as to minimize errors and eliminate the risks related with a spoonful of medication administered to children.
