Communicating doses of pediatric liquid medicines to parents/caregivers: a comparison of written dosing directions on prescriptions with labels applied by dispensed pharmacy.

Objective: To identify and compare volumetric measures used by healthcare providers in communicating dosing instructions for pediatric liquid prescriptions to parents/caregivers.

Study Design: Dosing instructions were retrospectively reviewed for the 10 most frequently prescribed liquid medications dispensed from 4 community pharmacies for patients aged ≤ 12 years during a 3-month period. Volumetric measures on original prescriptions (ie, milliliters, teaspoons) were compared with those utilized by the pharmacist on the pharmacy label dispensed to the parent/caregiver.