Pediatric Drug Dosages: Using a hybrid age-length system is efficient and effective [EMS World]

Jason Busch — Peter Antevy, MD, never intended to reinvent the wheel. He was just looking for a more efficient, effective way to determine drug dosages for his pediatric patients. What he eventually came up with—what would become the Handtevy method—bears an obvious resemblance, at least in principle, to the Broselow Tape. But they’re not the same thing. As Antevy puts it, where the Broselow Tape was a leap forward when it debuted in the mid-1980s, the Handtevy method is the next step in the evolution of pediatric emergency medicine.

Antevy is founder and CEO of Pediatric Emergency Standards, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, FL, and medical director of Davie Fire-Rescue, associate medical director of Miramar Fire Rescue and medical director of the EMS Division of Broward College. When he was taught, he learned to use age, rather than height, to determine weight and proper dosages in pediatric patients. Doctors are taught in medical school to give the milligram dose, says Antevy. But that’s not what the nurse needs. So, nurses are often forced to convert milligrams to milliliters on the spot, in the middle of a code, wasting valuable time and risking a miscalculation. And miscalculations do occur. Medication dosing errors occur in up to 17.8% of hospitalized children.

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