• oldfart@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    So USAnian drugs are in metric units? I hope in actual work nurses get to use a phone app or something because this asks for mistakes

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      99% of it is metric. I think the biggest outlier is home care, where you go visit some grandma who’s actively offended by metric, so if you tell her to take 7.5mL of something she’ll just do the deer in the headlights thing, then shove the bottle up her ass.

      Tell her instead that she needs to take 3 Mountain Dew caps full and suddenly she can follow instructions enough to not kill herself.

      • oldfart@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I thought everything is bigger across the ocean but your Mountain Dew caps are tiny over there! ;)

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Just googled it and apparently they’re about 5mL each. Apparently I’m not great at eyeballing volume.

          Add it to the pile of conversion failures between metric and imperial.

          • oldfart@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            Yeah, 5ml is a teaspoon, but I’m not sure if it’s reasonable to assume teaspoons have similar sizes across countries.

            But after your first month in the job you’ll convert and eyeball it even when half asleep :)

            • zod000@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              I know it should be obvious and maybe I missed the sarcasm, but the teaspoon unit is in no way the same as an actual teaspoon utensil. I also don’t use my own feet to measure length.

              • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                I didn’t think that was sarcasm, it’s just such a jacked up system of measurement that he’s not confident it doesn’t change with borders, which is honestly a pretty reasonable point of uncertainty.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Even in the US, science is mostly metric. But most US people are not exactly the scientific kind…

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      3 months ago

      It works fine when everything around you is in those numbers. The scale for medications might be set to mg, or injections in mL. The bottles for both are labeled the same way. Everything works together, and you don’t really have to think about it.

      Part of the problem with converting everything to metric is it really needs to be everything. You can try talking about driving distances in km, and your gas tank in L/100km, and your speed in km/hr. However, the interstate highway signs will still be in miles, you buy gas in gallons, and the speed limit signs are in mph. This isn’t a case where you can just choose to use the metric system as an individual, because the whole system works against you.

      • oldfart@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        That is understandable, I was surprised that metric is actually used somewhere. Use in pharmacy also explains why in Hollywood stoner comedies they used grams, which always confused me.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          3 months ago

          It’s used all over the place in the US. It’s usually a weird, thoughtless mixture. Milk is sold in gallons, soda is sold in liters.

          In fact, you’ll find exceptions in most countries once you start looking for them. Just a matter of how prevalent the metric system is; nobody is 100%. Most common exception is car tires because of how industry standards work.