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• ALL DOSES ARE NOT CREATED EQUALLY
  Stephen J Robinson
  Published on: 3 July 2006

• Published on: 3 July 2006

  ALL DOSES ARE NOT CREATED EQUALLY

  • Stephen J Robinson, Locum Paediatric Registrar

  Dear Editor,

  I know that this may be a small point but perhaps it illustrates how easy it is to make mistakes with decimal points in prescriptions. The dose of dexamethasone should read 0.15 mg/kg not 15 mg/kg. If mistakes like this can be made in an article that must have been read quite a few times before submission then how can we as doctors writing scripts ever expect to be error free. Electronic prescribing goe...

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  Dear Editor,

  I know that this may be a small point but perhaps it illustrates how easy it is to make mistakes with decimal points in prescriptions. The dose of dexamethasone should read 0.15 mg/kg not 15 mg/kg. If mistakes like this can be made in an article that must have been read quite a few times before submission then how can we as doctors writing scripts ever expect to be error free. Electronic prescribing goes some way to address the problem but many places do not have electronic prescribing and even where it exists, problems with paediatric dosing on a per kg or body surface area basis persist. If we adopted a way of writing doses where under a gram we must use micrograms (or microg) it may help but it is all too easy to use the smallest number of letters. Here's to hoping we all do the best we can.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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