Four times A DAY

[questabellatreetop]

My DS has tonsillitis, he needs four doses of medicine a day. I take this to mean he needs four doses in a 24hour period, to me it's painstakingly obvious, DH says only during the day, I think that is absolutely ridiculous. Who is right?!

I suffer from tonsillitis. If you woke me in the night after I'd finally got some respite I would not be pleased.

Listen to your DH on this one.

Yes but in hospital it tends to be IV and these ARE given during the night. It would be quite rare on our ward to give oral ABs.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius 6am, 12pm, 6pm, 12am. Antibiotics. No need to wake up in night.

I can honestly say INEVERcame across a case where a patient was awoken during the night to take oral medication on a hospital ward

Same, and I work across hospital sites.

As a nurse, I wante my patents to have more than 6 hours unbroken sleep, @pollymere. I realise I trained back in the Dark Ages, but we used to do any last drugs at 10pm, given the patients a hot drink (cocoa, Horlicks etc), and get them settled down, and the main lights out by 11pm. We then did our level best not to do anything that would wake them up before 7am. So giving drugs at midnight and 6am would mean disturbing the patients twice.

And as a parent, I wanted the children asleep well before midnight and well after 6am, especially when they were small. I aimed to get them into bed by 7.30pm and didn’t want them up much before 7am. I also wanted to be asleep before midnight and until after 7am - so giving medication at midnight and 6am would have meant waking myself and the child twice in the night - hardly sensible imo.

Honestly, why would you wake a child unnecessarily? Unless they are seriously ill, it I should highly unlikely that they would need to have their antibiotics at perfect 6-hourly intervals. We didn’t give antibiotics that way in hospital, so I genuinely cannot see why it would be necessary in the home.

Common sense says balance giving the antibiotics at regular intervals with ensuring a sensible sleep pattern for the poorly child and their parents.

DD2 (2.5) hasn’t been well for a couple of days. She had 13.5 hours uninterrupted hours sleep last night and is much better today. No way I’d have woken her.

questabellatreetop
My DS has tonsillitis, he needs four doses of medicine a day. I take this to mean he needs four doses in a 24hour period, to me it's painstakingly obvious, DH says only during the day, I think that is absolutely ridiculous. Who is right?

DH is right. 6 kids in I would never wake one during the night for meds. Even when my youngest was recovering from meningitis, I never woke her for meds.

I would never wake an ill child to give medication. That is ludicriojs!!!

Just like my spelling! *ludicrous

I do Day time only as it's a lengthy process of negotiation to get DS to swallow it as it tastes 'isgusting'

Personally I’d spread it throughout the [waking] day but spread out as much as possible - so first as soon as awake, last as late as possible before bedtime and the other two evenly spaced in between.

Was a bit horrified on postnatal ward that the neonatal nurses expected me to apply AB eye cream to newborn DD’s eyes exactly every six hours - so midnight, 6am, noon, 6pm and would shake me awake to get me to do it - no matter whether I’d only been asleep for an hour after the previous feed.