"Each year, thousands of children are treated in emergency departments after finding and ingesting medicine, or after accidentally being given the wrong amount. Learn how to keep children safe by practicing safe dosing and storage.
June is National Safety Month and a perfect opportunity for parents and caregivers of young children to remember the importance of safe medication use and storage.
Safe Medicine Use
“Dosing errors (when a parent or other caregiver gives too much or too little medicine) are the type of medication error that most often brings children into the Emergency Department.” says Dr. Shonna Yin, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Population Health at the NYU School of Medicine.
When giving children liquid medicine, confusion about units of measurement can lead to large dosing errors. For example, giving a child 5 teaspoons (tsp) instead of his/her prescribed dose of 5 milliliters (mL) would result in giving five times more than the prescribed dose!
To prevent dosing errors, medical professional organizations recommend using milliliters (mL) when prescribing oral liquid medicines and that mL units be the only units appearing on dosing instructions, labels, and dosing devices (such as oral syringes and dosing cups).."Medicine storage
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