Neonatal Electronic Dose Calculator

Context

Electronic dose calculators were designed as an easy to use tool that doctors and nursing staff working in the East of England Acute Neonatal Transport Service and Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, would use to provide a quick guide to doses of emergency drugs that a neonate may need.

Aims

The dose calculators allow prescribing of neonatal doses to be undertaken more safely, providing a pre-printed prescription for incubation drugs and a double check of doses for other emergency drugs. The aim is to reduce risk of dose calculation errors.

Description

The tools are based in an excel spreadsheet, where the users only have access to enter data into five cells for the baby name, call number, baby weight, their date of birth and date that the sheet was created.

When the Acute Neonatal Transport Service tool is printed, a single page is produced which contains pre-calculated doses of common emergency drugs and other neonatal drugs where calculations may be tricky e.g. neonatal drug infusions.

When the hospital tool is printed, two pages are produced with the second page as a pre-printed incubation prescription chart.

Implementation

The drug calculators have been adapted several times since they were first implemented. It needed to be a quick tool for users to use and also contain information that was relevant and important for the users.

Now that ePrescribing has been implemented locally, the hospital dose calculator sheet is no longer used. ‘When required’ doses of the emergency NICU drugs are now prescribed as part of an admission order set in the ePrescribing system.

Hospital tool lead: Nigel Gooding – Lead Pharmacist (Paediatrics) & Dr Meredith Robertson – Consultant Paediatrician

Organisation: Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Addenbrookes Hospital Cambridge and The East of England Acute Neonatal Transport Service