When an unwell child turns up needing resuscitation – weight might be the last thing on your mind. Yet it impacts everything that follows, from airway equipment sizes… to fluid calculations… to drug doses. We’re not expected to guess. Instead we can ask the parents if they know a recent weight from clinic. We can utilise tools (e.g. formulae, Broselow tape). We can even (if they’re not too unwell) get them onto the scales.

Whatever you do, remember to think twice and just do a mental double check that the weight you’re using looks right. In this scenario our patient with cerebral palsy barely weighed 20 kilograms, nowhere near the >50kg estimated for his age!

And another thing – above 12 years of age the formulae become increasingly useless.