ped dosing?

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TennisProJoe

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Can someone explain how to dose the solutions given to kids, like amox? And also how to write the script out? Thanks -joe

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I would venture to guess that your attending could help you out with that.
 
pediatric dosing is done by weight. Say you're dosing amoxicillin and you want to do double strength for a pna. that's 80-90mg/kg/day divided BID. You'll need to look this up somewhere.

Let's say the kid weighs 10kg. that kid gets 400mg of amoxicillin BID.

Next, you need to know what the concentration is that it can come in. In the case of amox, it does come in 400mg/5ml concentrations. In this cas,e that kid needs 1tsp (1tsp = 5mL) BID. YOu will also need to look this up somewhere

Lastly, you need to know what size bottle to give. Well, actually you don't need to know that at all:) The pharmacist is your friend and figures it out on his own.


A typical peds Rx looks like:

Drug X Conc. Y
Take ZmL/tsp PO BID xN days.
Q.S (quantity sufficient. this lets the pharmacist use his own judgment).

So that amox script up there is written as:

Amoxicillin 400mg/5mL
Take 1tsp PO BID x5days
Q.S.

Of course, as a non-doc, you can't write prescriptions yet anyway. So maybe you'll be lucky and not have to write pediatric scripts ever. They certainly take more work than your standard regular script. Of course the nice thing is if you get used to weight based dosings, you'll be able to apply it to adult medicine which honestly is not done enough (for example, you'll actually be able to avoid underdosing opiates which is extremely common on medical floors).
 
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