A prescriber writes an order for an oral liquid antipsychotic as "1.0 mg by mouth at bedtime." Why is this way of writing the dose considered unsafe?

Giải thích

A trailing zero adds no clinical information but creates real danger: if the decimal point is faint or lost in transmission, 1.0 mg is read as 10 mg. The safe convention is the opposite pair of rules: never use a trailing zero (write 1 mg), but always use a leading zero for doses under one (write 0.5 mg, not .5 mg). Small doses are not converted to mcg simply for being small, decimal points are allowed in liquid orders, and a trailing zero says nothing about rounding.