Reference no: EM13195544

In many cases, patients require medication to be infused on a continual base. Paramedics will receive orders to administer a certain number of units (usually milligrams or micrograms) of a medication per minute to a patient through an IV. Known as an infusion, it is also referred to as an IV drip because it involves calculating the number of drops that "drip" and are delivered intravenously each minute to deliver the amount of drug the doctor is ordering. Even though most of these IV infusions are commercially available already premixed, paramedics will be tested on mixing the medication and starting the infusion correctly without the medication being premixed.

You are a newly trained paramedic. On your first day on the job

The Doctor orders 2 mg/min of Lidocaine to be infused to a patient who is experiencing an arrhythmia. Your ambulance carries only 250 ml bags of D5W. You have a 60 gtt/mL microdrip setup. Your experienced colleague suggests you use as your IV drip. Minutes later, your patient goes into cardiac arrest. Write a 1-2 page summary that shows how many drops per minute your administration set for the IV drip was supposed to be, and what was the likely reason why your patient went into cardiac arrest