A new medication dosing system will be rolling out this year for county emergency medical services across the state. The mobile application provides quick access to medication dosing guidelines for children and tracks the medications and doses.
With EMS staff stretched thin across the state, the system aims to take some pressure off emergency medical technicians and paramedics calculating weight-based dosages out in the field.
The Conversation discussed the benefits of the system with two staff members from the Hawaiʻi Department of Health: Dr. Alvin Bronstein, chief of the Emergency Medical Services Injury Prevention System Branch, and EMS for Children program coordinator Kristy Luke.
"Having to do math under pressure can lead to errors. And when we talk about errors, it's not only overdosing, it's underdosing, or even omitting if they don't feel comfortable, they might omit medicating altogether," Luke said.
Bronstein said the most stressful situation is a cardiac arrest where the child needs to be resuscitated. Treatment requires very small amounts of medication.
"It's very easy, for instance, to get a decimal point off, which then could cause more problem than the problem one's dealing with. So that's the idea here that the system says 'give X number of milligrams IV,' and there's no question once the patient's age and the weight gets inputted into the system and the drug is chosen," he said.
"It's not so much that we have a problem. We want to make it easier to care for the pediatric patients. That's the whole point of this. And this system is used around the country, and we're implementing it here in the state," Bronstein said.
It's funded by a federal grant from the EMS for Children program, which was championed by the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.
This interview aired on The Conversation on May 2, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. This story was adapted for the web by Sophia McCullough.
