At what rate should an IV antibiotic in 50 mL of 0.9% sodium chloride be administered over 20 minutes?

To determine the correct rate for administering an intravenous antibiotic in 50 mL of 0.9% sodium chloride over a period of 20 minutes, it is important to first convert the time into hours for a standard flow rate calculation.

The total volume being infused is 50 mL. To administer this amount over 20 minutes, we need to convert the time from minutes to hours. Since there are 60 minutes in an hour, 20 minutes can be represented as ( \frac{20}{60} ) hours, which simplifies to ( \frac{1}{3} ) of an hour or approximately 0.33 hours.

Now, to calculate the flow rate in mL per hour, we can use the following formula:

[

\text{Flow rate (mL/hr)} = \frac{\text{Total Volume (mL)}}{\text{Time (hr)}}

]

Substituting the numbers into the formula gives us:

[

\text{Flow rate} = \frac{50 \text{ mL}}{\frac{1}{3} \text{ hr}} = 50 \text{ mL} \times 3 = 150 \text{ mL