2002-05-10 When my aunt was in the hospital in 1996, all the machines that she was hooked up do displayed all its data in metric. There were some misuse of symbols and some units that were not SI, but no FFU was present. even her body temperature was in degrees "C". I don't know if to the hospital that meant degrees Celsius or degrees Centigrade. I know they are the same thing, but I don't know if the hospital personnel used the correct term.
The bed had a scale hooked up to it to weigh the patient in it. Hers was off each time I visited. I could see it could display in kilograms and pounds. I don't know which the hospital used. As far as I know ALL prescription drugs are in metric. There are some products sold over the counter (no prescription required), such as cough medicine, laxatives, etc., that come in FFU (SI), where FFU is a rational size. For the most part, medicine is full metric. Then of course, when the public is involved there is always back converting to FFU. So, the public is clueless as to how metric the medical profession is. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Elwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2002-05-10 17:26 Subject: [USMA:20000] RE: metric in hospitals > At 09:42 PM 5/10/2002 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >How far has the metric system penetrated medicine? > >Drug labels? > >Dose instructions to patients? > >Are all American pharmacists fully metricated by law? What about > >doctors? It would be bizarre to mix systems. > > I don't know enough about the medical system in the USA to answer this > fully. I can say that the drugs I've had exposure to (well, at least the > legal ones...) seem to be largely metricated (dosages in milligrams and > milliliters), but that is a very small sampling. > > > Jim Elwell > Electrical Engineer > Industrial manufacturing manager > Salt Lake City, Utah, USA > www.qsicorp.com >
