A patient needs 1500 ml of D5LR infused over 8 hours using 20 gtts/ml tubing. How many gtts/min should be administered?

To determine the correct infusion rate in gtts/min for a 1500 ml solution over 8 hours, with the drip factor of the tubing being 20 gtts/ml, you can follow these steps:

First, find out how many total minutes are in 8 hours:

8 hours x 60 minutes/hour = 480 minutes.

Next, calculate the number of milliliters to be infused per minute:

1500 ml ÷ 480 minutes = 3.125 ml/min.

Now that you know the infusion rate in ml/min, you convert ml/min to gtts/min using the drip factor:

3.125 ml/min x 20 gtts/ml = 62.5 gtts/min.

Since you typically round to the nearest whole number when calculating drops, this rounds up to approximately 63 gtts/min.

Thus, the correct answer is 63 gtts/min. This is based on fully considering both the total volume to be infused and the total time in which it is to be administered, leading to an accurate understanding of how to use drip factors for calculating infusion rates.