Safe Weight-based Dosing in Healthcare

Accurate weighing equipment is essential in patient care. Weighments are needed to calculate drug doses, establish nutrition plans, check health conditions, assess fluid balances and overall health. Many medicines and dosing deliveries, whether intravenous, oral or other, depend on a patient’s weight for efficacy and safety.

Incorrect dosages can lead to serious health concerns or adverse drug events, and create a chain reaction that proper weighing could have avoided. For example, if an operator unknowingly switches a scale from kilograms to pounds, weight may be recorded in the wrong unit. This could lead to overprescribed narcotics, insulin, anesthesia or other medication. Facilities that standardize the unit of measure and rely on equipment that features unit of measure locking can prevent this potentially fatal mistake.

To have safe, accurate dosing, consider the following throughout the weighing process:

When choosing or cleaning a scale:

When recording weight:

Staying Consistent with Safe Weighing

Having procedures in place to maintain a safe and accurate weighing environment helps professionals in most facilities. But it’s important to remember that situations may arise where procedures are overridden, such as during staff shortages or after-hour admissions. If not carefully monitored, the following may occur:

• Estimations of patient weights
• Use of improperly calibrated scales
• Not taring a scale for calculations
• Failure to use proper weight resolutions on dual-range scales
• Human calculation errors

Weight-based Dosing Errors for Specific Patients

Specific weighing errors occur for different types of patients. For bariatric patients, weight-based dosing may be measured by ideal weight or through calculations compared to actual weight. Miscalculations may happen during this process.

Immunocompromised, pediatric and elderly patients must also be monitored carefully. These patients are more susceptible to dosing errors and may react negatively to medications even with proper dosing. Especially with babies and infants, small mistakes in dosing can result in serious health complications.

Rice Lake Weighing Systems’ Healthweigh® Scales

Preventing dosing errors begins with establishing proper procedures and using quality equipment. Rice Lake offers scales for a variety of patients, such as pediatric scales or bariatric handrail scales. With features such as movement compensation and locking units of measure, patients are weighed accurately every time.