Healthy Habits: Medication Dosing Accuracy

No matter what medication you're giving your children, accurate dosing is extremely important. Little bodies have a hard time metabolizing extra drugs, which means the effect of an overdose can become apparent with a smaller overdose than on an adult, and can be more severe. A study reported in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine that found only 67% of caregivers accurately measured the amount of over-the-counter medications they intended.

To help dose accurately:
- Don't use a kitchen spoon. Use a specific medical dosing spoon, syringe, or cup.
- Dose by weight. If the medication doesn't have dosage by weight listed, consult your pediatrician.
- Keep track of the time when you administer medication. Write it down instead of just relying on memory.
- Try not to mix drugs with food. It can be hard to determine if the child ingested all of the medication that way.

To make dosing even easier,  Health Enterprises, Inc. recently introduced the True Easy Syringe.
 
The True Easy Syringe started as the idea of a caring mother searching for an easier method to accurately measure and give medicine to her children. As a result of this inspiration, the True Easy’s 2-step dose accuracy was developed.

In the 1^st step of True Easy’s dose accuracy, the correct dosage is selected using a color coded dial. Once the dose is selected, the plunger is pulled back and stops at the selected dose, thereby eliminating any guesswork about the ‘right dose’. The 2^nd step is to visually verify the amount of fluid in the syringe against the easy to read calibrations. Once the accurate dose is verified, the oversized grip and plunger on True Easy make it easy to hold and control the flow of fluid to ensure the entire dose is administered.