Question

a nurse is preparing to administer amoxicillin 30 mg/kg/day divided equally every 12 hr to a toddler who weighs 33 lb. available is amoxicillin 200 mg/5 ml suspension. how many ml should the nurse administer? (round the answer to the nearest tenth. use a leading zero if it applies. do not use a trailing zero.)

Answer 1

To determine how much amoxicillin suspension to administer, the toddler's weight is converted to kilograms, the daily dosage in mg is calculated, and then the volume of the suspension is calculated based on its concentration. The nurse should administer 5.6 ml of the amoxicillin suspension every 12 hours.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question involves computing the amount of an amoxicillin suspension a nurse should administer to a toddler. First, we need to convert the toddler's weight from pounds to kilograms to calculate the daily dosage, and then divide that dosage into two as the medication will be given every 12 hours.

There are 2.2 lbs per kilogram. Therefore, the toddler weighs 33 lbs / 2.2 lbs/kg = 15 kg. The prescribed dosage is 30 mg/kg/day. Multiplying the child's weight in kg with the dosage gives 15 kg * 30 mg/kg/day = 450 mg/day. Since the medication is to be administered every 12 hours, we divide this daily dosage in two to give us 450 mg/day / 2 = 225 mg every 12 hours.

To find out how many milliliters of the amoxicillin suspension the nurse should administer, we use the concentration of the available suspension, which is 200 mg/5 ml. We set up a simple proportion: 200 mg/5 ml = 225 mg/x ml. Solving for x gives us (225 mg * 5 ml) / 200 mg = 5.625 ml. Rounded to the nearest tenth, the nurse should administer 5.6 ml of the amoxicillin suspension every 12 hours.