Many Parents With Poor Math Skills Give Kids Wrong Doses

No surprise here. Parents are too innumerate to give their kids the right "dose" of Calories.

Small wonder they cannot get drug doses right.

Limited quantitative skills in many parents lead to dosing errors in the medications that they give to their children.

In a study by researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital in New York City, 40% of parents made errors, primarily underdosing. More than two thirds of parents had poor quantitative skills, or "low numeracy," third-year resident Christine Marrese, MD, reported here at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2012 Annual Meeting.

She said the literature shows that at least half of parents give incorrect doses of medications, accounting for 70% of preventable pediatric outpatient drug adverse events. Contributing to the problem is the difficulty of administering liquid medications because of different concentrations, different units of measure, and the wide variety of dosing instruments (e.g., droppers, syringes, and graduated cylinders or cups).

Innumerate = fat = drug-related child abuse = should not have kids.