Prefilled, Color-Coded Syringes for Pediatric Resuscitations

Pediatric resuscitations are uncommon, high-stakes occurrences for general emergency physicians. Even after clinicians determine the correct dose of any medication, conventional methods require that they calculate the volume of medication to administer. These authors developed prefilled syringes with color-coded volume indicators corresponding to the Broselow-Luten system's estimated weight-based dosing.

In a crossover study, 10 physician-nurse pairs managed two simulated pediatric resuscitations scenarios with the novel syringes and conventional syringes. Outcome measures were (1) time from the start of medication preparation to completion of administration and (2) rate of critical medication errors, with an error defined as administering a…