1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.
2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to
4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.
1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.
2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.
3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!
4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.
Question | Answer |
| 1. You are to give "gr 5 FeSO 4 " but the available bottle gives only the milligrams of iron sulfate per tablet (325 mg/tab). How many milligrams is the order for? (Yes, hard to believe, but this and several of the other problems below are ones I've actually encountered in my nursing practice—there are still some old-school doctors out there who haven't gone metric.) | 5 gr x 64.8 mg = 324 mg, so you decide that's close enough and give 1 tab. | 2. You just opened a 500 mL bottle of guaifenesin and will be giving 1 tablespoon per dose. How many doses are in the bottle? In other words how many tablespoons are in 500 mL? | 33 tbs | 3. You give your home health patient an unopened 500 mL bottle of guaifenesin and tell them to take 2 teaspoons 4 times a day as ordered. They ask you how long the bottle will last. | you tell them the bottle will last 12 days. | 4. Your order is for meperidine (Demerol) 35 mg, IM, STAT. Available is a 2 mL vial containing 50 mg/mL meperidine. On hand are 1 mL and 3 mL syringes. How much should you draw up into which syringe? | 0.7 mL | 5. You are shadowing a nurse during a clinical who receives an order to adjust the infusion rate of a pump so that 1.6 mg of lidocaine are being delivered per minute. Hanging is a 100 mL piggyback containing 0.4 grams lidocaine, a 0.4% solution, which needs to be converted to mL/hr. Without writing anything down, the nurse tries to solve the problem on a calculator. After the fifth different and incorrect answer you find a piece of scratch paper and offer to show him how to set up the problem. He assures you he can always do problems like this on tests, but admits that at the moment his brain doesn't seem to be working. How would you set up and explain the problem to him? | Checking to make sure all the units of measure, except for mL and hr, cancel out, now is the time for the calculator. Crunching the numbers twice (first x x x ¸ ¸ , then x x ¸ x ¸ ) and getting 24.0 each time, we can now set the pump with confidence. | 6. On your first day of clinicals at a long-term care facility you are caring for a resident receiving total enteral feeding through a PEG tube. He is receiving 60 mL Jevity per hour as ordered when the pump fails and no other pumps are available. His over-extended regular nurse hangs drip tubing, adjusts the drip rate to something that "looks about right," and rushes on to her next demand. You decide to adjust the drip rate accurately to give the ordered amount. What You look in the trash for the tubing package, but don't see it. You recall seeing tubing in the supply room and go there looking for the same tubing as what was hung. The reason is drop size varies from 8 to 60 drops per mL. The manufacturer would have calibrated their drip chamber and put the number of drops/mL on the package, and it is the drop factor (drops/mL) that you need to know. You finally find the tubing used and the package says 12 drops/mL. To accurately adjust the machine, you need to know drops/min. | 12 drops per minute or 3 drops every 15 seconds which is easier to count. It turns out that "about right" was about twice the ordered rate. | 7. Your hospice patient is on a double pump. One side is running NS at 30 mL/hr KVO, and the other has a 100 mL bag containing 2 mg morphine sulfate (MS) running at 5 mL/hr for pain management. She begins to show signs of breakthrough pain and her doctor orders 0.2 mg MS STAT. You would normally use a prefilled syringe containing 1 mg/1 mL MS and give 0.2 mL IV push, but on looking in the narcotic cabinet you find none available and the pharmacy is closed. It occurs to you that you could reset the pump to deliver 0.2 mg MS in 5 minutes, then go back to 5 mL/hr. At what rate should you set the pump? | rate=120 mL MS sol and the volume infused is 10 mL MS sol. | 8. How would you prepare 2 L of 3% sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and water solution? You have only a measuring cup. | 1/4 cup bleach and 8.1 cups water | 9. The order is for amoxicillin 60 mg, po, tid for a child weighing 13 lb. The pediatric dosage range is 20-40 mg/kg/day in three equal doses. Is the dose safe? | The dosage will be 30.5 mg/kg/day, which is safe. | 10. A child with severe poison ivy weighs 25 kg and Benadryl PO 5 mg/kg/day is ordered for 4 doses/day. Benadryl is available as a 12.5 mg/5 mL solution. You know you need to know mL/dose. | 12.5 mL/dose |
You are to give "gr 5 FeSO 4 " but the available bottle gives only the milligrams of iron sulfate per tablet (325 mg/tab). How many milligrams is the order for? (Yes, hard to believe, but this and several of the other problems below are ones I've actually encountered in my nursing practice—there are still some old-school doctors out there who haven't gone metric.) &choe=UTF-8
Question 1 (of 10)
You just opened a 500 mL bottle of guaifenesin and will be giving 1 tablespoon per dose. How many doses are in the bottle? In other words how many tablespoons are in 500 mL?&choe=UTF-8
Question 2 (of 10)
You give your home health patient an unopened 500 mL bottle of guaifenesin and tell them to take 2 teaspoons 4 times a day as ordered. They ask you how long the bottle will last.&choe=UTF-8
Question 3 (of 10)
Your order is for meperidine (Demerol) 35 mg, IM, STAT. Available is a 2 mL vial containing 50 mg/mL meperidine. On hand are 1 mL and 3 mL syringes. How much should you draw up into which syringe?&choe=UTF-8
Question 4 (of 10)
You are shadowing a nurse during a clinical who receives an order to adjust the infusion rate of a pump so that 1.6 mg of lidocaine are being delivered per minute. Hanging is a 100 mL piggyback containing 0.4 grams lidocaine, a 0.4% solution, which needs to be converted to mL/hr. Without writing anything down, the nurse tries to solve the problem on a calculator. After the fifth different and incorrect answer you find a piece of scratch paper and offer to show him how to set up the problem. He assures you he can always do problems like this on tests, but admits that at the moment his brain doesn't seem to be working. How would you set up and explain the problem to him? &choe=UTF-8
Question 5 (of 10)
On your first day of clinicals at a long-term care facility you are caring for a resident receiving total enteral feeding through a PEG tube. He is receiving 60 mL Jevity per hour as ordered when the pump fails and no other pumps are available. His over-extended regular nurse hangs drip tubing, adjusts the drip rate to something that "looks about right," and rushes on to her next demand. You decide to adjust the drip rate accurately to give the ordered amount. What You look in the trash for the tubing package, but don't see it. You recall seeing tubing in the supply room and go there looking for the same tubing as what was hung. The reason is drop size varies from 8 to 60 drops per mL. The manufacturer would have calibrated their drip chamber and put the number of drops/mL on the package, and it is the drop factor (drops/mL) that you need to know. You finally find the tubing used and the package says 12 drops/mL. To accurately adjust the machine, you need to know drops/min.&choe=UTF-8
Question 6 (of 10)
Your hospice patient is on a double pump. One side is running NS at 30 mL/hr KVO, and the other has a 100 mL bag containing 2 mg morphine sulfate (MS) running at 5 mL/hr for pain management. She begins to show signs of breakthrough pain and her doctor orders 0.2 mg MS STAT. You would normally use a prefilled syringe containing 1 mg/1 mL MS and give 0.2 mL IV push, but on looking in the narcotic cabinet you find none available and the pharmacy is closed. It occurs to you that you could reset the pump to deliver 0.2 mg MS in 5 minutes, then go back to 5 mL/hr. At what rate should you set the pump?&choe=UTF-8
Question 7 (of 10)
How would you prepare 2 L of 3% sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and water solution? You have only a measuring cup. &choe=UTF-8
Question 8 (of 10)
The order is for amoxicillin 60 mg, po, tid for a child weighing 13 lb. The pediatric dosage range is 20-40 mg/kg/day in three equal doses. Is the dose safe?&choe=UTF-8
Question 9 (of 10)
A child with severe poison ivy weighs 25 kg and Benadryl PO 5 mg/kg/day is ordered for 4 doses/day. Benadryl is available as a 12.5 mg/5 mL solution. You know you need to know mL/dose.&choe=UTF-8
Question 10 (of 10)
