Weigh out: A new formula needed?
The most accurate method of determining a paediatric patient's weight is to weigh them, however this is not as practical in the pre-hospital setting as it is in the hospital emergency department (ED). A recent study by Winship et al (2012) found that the most accurate formula for estimating a child's weight is the best guess formula, however, this is not currently used in the pre-hospital setting due to it's complexity. Previous studies into the estimation of a patient's age and weight have shown gross inaccuracies (Williams et al. 2010), and although there are certain paediatric weight estimation formula, in some cases, an estimation of the patient's age is required to do this, hence the introduction of inaccuracy.