YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!!! Print this out and save it for when a relevant story breaks in the press. The most unjustly tolerated "unit" of measurement in this or any other century is the teaspoonful in United States healthcare. Why this "unit" of measurement continues to be coveted by physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners is simply this: it is used out of habit, and no one has yet died of this WOMBAT mal-metrology and had the story covered in the media. If a mishap occurs, and is publicized, I cannot see how the teaspoonful would survive. There is no standard teaspoon, but there is a kind of standard teaspoonful. As a pharmacy student, I was taught to translate the teaspoonful as 5 ml . However, a strict historical look at the teaspoonful suggests that it could also be one fluid dram, which is about 3.7 ml . In any case, the vast majority of oral solutions manufactured for human pharmacologic use have a stated concentration of grams (or milligrams) PER FIVE MILLILITERS of product. So, my hope is that we Americans, who have embraced tamper-resistant packaging, baby car seats, Lo-Jack, The Club, latex condoms, and "close cover before striking", will one day adopt the convention of using a standard medicine cup for taking medicine, that standard cup will be graduated only in milliliters, and that the milliliter will be the only unit of dosage volume to be used with oral-solution and oral-suspension medications. And while we're at it, we MUST get the minim scale off of syringes. If anyone out there uses a syringe to draw up a volume of fluid in minims, please let me know, at [EMAIL PROTECTED] I've never, ever, ever heard it done. -- Paul Trusten, R.Ph. 3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apt. 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 USA (915)-694-6208 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
