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Pediatrics Online Drug Dosing Calculators Linda Elbers, PharmD Clinical Solution Executive
The Pediatrics Online solution includes age, weight, and indication-specific drug
dosing calculators.
These dosing calculators provide evidence- based dose recommendations,
accurate dosage calculations, and warnings for out of range values.
Maximum dose recommendations and warnings are provided for older or
obese pediatric patients so that calculated weight-based doses do not
exceed the recommended adult dose.
The Pediatrics Online drug dosing calculators can be accessed by directly
logging into the application
or by clicking on the pediatrics link in your existing MDX 2.0 browser.
Once you have accessed Pediatrics Online, you'll be defaulted to the drug
monograph tab.
To access the calculators, click on the generic calculator tab.
Once you have accessed the calculator tab, the first step is to enter the
patient information.
To enter the patient's date of birth, click on the calendar and select the
appropriate day, month, and year.
For this example, we'll enter a three-year-old child.
The program calculates the patient's age and the last steps are to enter the
patient's weight and click Proceed to calculator.
On this screen, you can see your patient's information on the right hand side
and the system will use this information to provide the appropriate dosing
calculator for the drug chosen.
To access the calculators for a particular drug,
begin typing the drug name into the alpha filter and then choose the drug of
interest.
For this example, we'll choose Vancomycin.
Click on Vancomycin to access the dosing calculators.
Once you have accessed the Vancomycin calculator screen, you can then access the
indication-specific dose recommendations.
The evidence-based dose recommendations provided in the pediatric drug
monographs are used to create the drug dosing calculators
based on the age parameters
so that you are presented with the appropriate dosage for the patient you
have entered.
The calculators are indication and route- specific and present all of the correct
dosing parameters for dose calculation
so that you don't need to look it up and enter the values yourself.
This definitely saves time when calculating appropriate doses.
The user simply clicks calculate and are provided with the correct dose
amount,
dose volume, and delivery rate.
There are no calculations that are done by hand which significantly decreases
the risk for inadvertent dosage errors.
All of the calculators have referenced dosing information on the left side
and the editable dosage values on the right side, so you can quickly evaluate
other potential appropriate dosage parameters.
If there's a need to change a default value in the calculators based on the
clinical situation, this can be done by changing the value in the desired field,
including calculate.
All of the dosing calculator values have high and low defaults set in the
background
in order to detect potential under or overdoses.
This is critical functionality for identifying and preventing inadvertent
dosing errors.
If the user enters a value that is outside what is considered an acceptable usual
dosage value, the system will pop up a warning message to alert the user
that they need to reconsider what they have entered.
In this case, the system is alerting us that the dose value is too low,
and is providing what is considered the usual accepted
dose range.
We'll revised the dose back to fifteen milligrams per kilo and calculate again.
Other functionality within the calculators includes change drug, which
will take you back to the drug list alpha filter to choose another drug to
work with.
Reset Form will reset the calculator values back to their original defaults.
Print will allow you to print a copy of the drug dosage calculations.
By clicking drug monograph you can access the drug monograph directly from
the calculator screen
in order to review any of the information associated with the drug
without having to leave the calculator screen.
Finally,
the comments button allows you to add additional information to the printed drug
dosage calculations.
It's important to note that any dose changes identified through continued
literature surveillance and evaluation will be applied appropriately to the
drug monographs and the drug dosing calculators
during the content update process so you always have the most up-to-date
and consistent content available.
The Pediatrics Online drug dosing calculators combine evidence-based
dose recommendations
with efficient calculator functionality to provide clinicians with safe and
effective drug dosage calculations for every drug in the system.
For more information, contact truvenhealth.com