Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Decimal points. Use 'em.

Seen in a hospital chart:


Thank you, Kim!

16 comments:

R said...

My ex was half way through her family practice residency before she discovered that one of the MA's had been documenting infant weights incorrectly during clinic visits. The scale read in pounds and ounces but the dimwit MA was documenting pounds and decimal pounds in the chart. She never figured out how many kids they hospitalized for failure to thrive because of this blunder.

Anonymous said...

If the patient weighs 1,210 pounds, they should have used a large BP cuff.

Anonymous said...

Are we still talking about yesterday's horse? Can't figure out how to 'sit' a horse for a BP, though.

Jessie said...

I am surprised they used pounds and ounces for infants. Wheen my son was in the NICU everything was grams and I had to translate to lbs for friends and family.

That was 9 years ago. My 2lb 2oz preemie is now a tall, bright, healthy 3rd grader :-) NICU nurses are the best.

Anonymous said...

You don't sit a horse for BP. You put the cuff around the tail. Tail is also preferred for cats and dogs.

Packer said...

Nickname : Jabba

Jono said...

Time to back off of the donuts.

Loren Pechtel said...

Huh? Pounds.decimals vs pounds.ounces can't produce a difference of more than 6 ounces, is that enough to put a baby in the hospital for failure to thrive??


As for this one--can 1210#, 5'5" even sit?

Anonymous said...

Let a pharmacist correct you. If the patient weighed 121 lbs they should not by JCAHO standards use trailing zeros with decimal points it should be 121 lbs not 121.0 ,lol ,in good jest ,in good jest

Anonymous said...

Yep 1210 connotes a person of size. The 121 not so much.

Jillian said...

Excellent vitals for a horse.

Anonymous said...

The scary thing is that a poor EHR might ignorantly calculate a dosage from such a weight. You might THINK a human would realize when they mix and administer Cisplatin at 10x the standard dose, but not always; I have seen it. The doctor missed a decimal and it got past two pharmacists and the onc nurses two days in a row before anyone realized (how?!). The patient was flown to a nearby hospital for plasmapheresis. Thankfully, he lived. Can't blame them for suing. The doctor was absolutely sick with guilt though.. it was hard to watch, but surely harder for the patient and family. I hope he recovered without disability.. he was young and had a very treatable cancer.

CHECK YOUR DECIMALS ALWAYS!

Lin said...

Actually that pulse would be high for an adult horse, bp mostly normal though.

Anonymous said...

Metrics. Metrics. Besides 550 kg just 'sounds' better than half a ton (or whatever 1,210 pounds is).

OldSquid said...

BMI of 201 sadly I've seen higher, but usually when the height is 5.5"

Met said...

Yeah, my first thought upon getting this prescription would be "are we making something for a horse? or the zoo?" I've heard of people getting to 500 or 600 pounds, but half a ton?

And yeah, pharmacists (and us techs) hate trailing zeros, or people who don't put a zero in front of the decimal point. It's way to easy to make the mistake of .50 mg into 50 mg and very quickly land someone in the hospital or morgue, and lose your license along the way.

 
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