Stop spoon dosing: milliliter instructions reduce inclination to spoon dosing.

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology
• Patient Safety
• Measurement Science

Background:

• Drug Facts panels often use teaspoon units for liquid medication dosing.
• Teaspoon measurements can be imprecise and lead to medication dosing errors.
• Kitchen teaspoons vary in size, increasing the risk of incorrect doses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if teaspoon units in medication dosing instructions contribute to errors.
• To determine if using millimeter units could reduce these dosing errors.

Main Methods:

• A study compared dosing errors between participants given instructions in teaspoon units versus millimeter units.
• Participant selection of measuring devices was observed.

Main Results:

• Participants instructed with teaspoon units were twice as likely to select a kitchen teaspoon compared to those given milliliter units (31.3% vs. 15.4%).
• This indicates a higher propensity for using non-standardized measuring tools with teaspoon instructions.

Conclusions:

• Changing dosing instructions from teaspoon to millimeter units can significantly reduce medication dosing errors.
• Over 50% reduction in spoon usage and associated dosage errors is achievable by adopting metric units.