Medications put in the additive section of the fluid calculator are NOT counted towards inventory. However, adding fluid additives in the Medication section allows them to be tracked on the billing PDF.
For clarity, we suggest creating a Route called Added to Bag. This way, we can avoid fluid additives being mistaken for fluid boluses on the Medical Record.
Open up any medication and in the Route section where you would normally select from the drop-down, click the Search bar and type in Added to Bag (see the screenshot below):
Enter the volume of the medication you'll be adding to the bag in the ml field here. Be sure to set the option for frequency (Continue every (hours) box) to once to avoid confusion. and click Done to save:
This way, it is clearly indicated that although the medication will be administered IV (as an additive to the fluids), it will not be given directly to the patient at that time. It is also displayed clearly on the flowsheet (as seen in the screenshot below). The cell is to be initialed after the medication has been added to the bag of fluids.
As the additives section display is limited to one line on the iPad, when you're creating a multiple-drug cocktail, you may want to create a fluid named accordingly. If you're only adding one additive, you can just use your regular fluid and add the additive there:
If you don't want them to come across as billable items, you can see THIS FAQ on how to turn the Billing OFF.
We hope you found this information useful!