A nurse documenting a wound assessment in a computer notices that a client's wound measurement must be entered in inches instead of centimeters.
How many inches (in.) is equal to 2.54 centimeters?

This numeric form is appropriate, according to the Joint Commission, because it does not use a trailing zero after a decimal point, which is a common cause of medication errors and should be avoided. A trailing zero may be misread or misinterpreted as a larger dose or omited altogether, resulting in a 10-fold overdose or underdose, respectively. For example, when prescriptions have been writen for "Coumadin 1.0 mg," patients have received 10 mg in error¹². Therefore, the Joint Commission requires that a trailing zero may be used only when required to demonstrate the level of precision of the value being reported, such as for laboratory results, imaging studies that report the size of lesions, or catheter/tube sizes. It may not be used in medication orders or other medication-related documentation.

The other options are not appropriate numeric forms because:

a) 3.0 uses a trailing zero after a decimal point, which poses a risk of confusion or error.

b) 0.30 uses a trailing zero after a decimal point, which poses a risk of confusion or error.

c) 0.03 is not equivalent to 0.3, as it is 10 times smaller.

The dose of the medicine per day is 1.8 mcg.

This answer is correct because it is based on a simple multiplication calculation. The nurse should follow these steps to calculate the dose of the medicine per day:

1) Divide 24 hours by the frequency of the dose to get the number of doses per day, as follows:

24 / 4 = 6

Therefore, the client will receive 6 doses of the medicine per day.

2) Multiply the number of doses per day by the amount of each dose to get the total dose per day, as follows:

6 x 0.3 mcg = 1.8 mcg

Therefore, the dose of the medicine per day is 1.8 mcg.