Next time you give your child liquid medication, double check you’re administering the right amount.
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Additionally, 84 percent of parents made at least one dosing error of greater than 20 percent while measuring nine doses of medication under experimental conditions using an oral syringe or cup.
Often, those errors were large enough to cause concern, said lead researcher Dr. Shonna Yin, an associate professor of pediatrics at NYU School of Medicine in New York City. More than two-thirds (68.0 percent) of the dosing errors made during the new study involved overdosing. According to the study, 21 percent of parents have measured more than twice the recommended dose.
But are parents to blame? Researchers found more than 80 percent of parents have accidentally given the wrong dose of liquid medication to their children using two common measuring tools, dosing cups and dosing syringes.
Parents were asked to measure 3 doses of a liquid medication (2.5mL, 5mL, and 7.5mL) using 3 tools, for a total of 9 measurements. In the study, use of a teaspoon-only label was associated with more errors than when milliliter-only labels and tools were used. They were asked to measure 3 doses of a liquid medication. Differences in error rates were highest for the 2.5mL (smallest) dose, with error rates for cups at 73.4% and syringe error rates at 23.9% (0.2mL syringe) and 22.1% (0.5mL syringe) (P .001). “If a cup is not held at eye level, it is easy to put too little or too much medicine into the cup”.
He said parents who have questions about medicine should not hesitate to contact their doctor.
Standardizing measuring instruments and labels may reduce the dosing errors commonly made by parents with oral pediatric medication. Dosing cups proved much less reliable than an oral syringe in terms of dosage.
Another way to cut down on errors – use labels that call for and tools that measure in milliliters instead of teaspoons or tablespoons.
“When a parent uses a cup, they have to be careful about how they hold the cup”, Yin said by email.
Be sure to use these for over-the-counter medications like Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl.
Because silverware can vary widely in size and shape, parents shouldn’t dispense medicine from kitchen spoons. Researchers said tools with standard markings like oral syringes, droppers, or even dosing cups are better than spoons.
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More information: For more on giving children medication, visit the American Academy of Family Physicians.
