ArticleJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine2004
Doctors' confusion over ratios and percentages in drug solutions: the case for standard labelling.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- It's Just Math-Unless It's Toxic!AEM education and training · 2020Article
- Article
- Medication knowledge, certainty, and risk of errors in health care: a cross-sectional study.BMC health services research · 2011Article
- Article
- Ability of medical students to calculate drug doses in children after their paediatric attachment.Pharmacy practice · 2008Article
- Variability in the concentrations of intravenous drug infusions prepared in a critical care unit.Intensive care medicine · 2008Article
- Review
- Medication errors and confusion over labelling.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2004Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The different ways of expressing concentrations of drugs in solution, as ratios or percentages or mass per unit volume, are a potential cause of confusion that may contribute to dose errors. To assess doctors' understanding of what they signify, all active subscribers to doctors.net.uk, an online community exclusively for UK doctors, were invited to complete a brief web-based multiple-choice questionnaire that explored their familiarity with solutions of adrenaline (expressed as a ratio), lidocaine (expressed as a percentage) and atropine (expressed in mg per mL), and their ability to calculate the correct volume to administer in clinical scenarios relevant to all specialties. 2974 (24.6%) replied. The mean score achieved was 4.80 out of 6 (SD 1.38). Only 85.2% and 65.8% correctly identified the mass of drug in the adrenaline and lidocaine solutions, respectively, whilst 93.1% identified the correct concentration of atropine. More would have administered the correct volume of adrenaline and lidocaine in clinical scenarios (89.4% and 81.0%, respectively) but only 65.5% identified the correct volume of atropine. The labelling of drug solutions as ratios or percentages is antiquated and confusing. Labelling should be standardized to mass per unit volume.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.