Liquid medication administration: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia

Liquid medication administration

URL of this page: //medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002209.htm

If the medicine comes in suspension form, shake well before using.

Do not use flatware spoons used for eating for giving medicine. They are not all the same size. For example, a flatware teaspoon could be as small as one half teaspoon (2.5 milliliters [mL]) or as large as 2 teaspoons (10 mL).

Measuring spoons used for cooking are accurate, but they spill easily.

Oral syringes have some advantages for giving liquid medicines.

They are accurate.
They are easy to use.
You can take a capped syringe containing a dose of medicine to your child’s daycare or school.

There can be problems with oral syringes, however. The FDA has had reports of young children choking on syringe caps. To be safe, remove the cap before you use an oral syringe. Throw it away if you do not need it for future use. If you need it, keep it out of reach of infants and small children.

Dosing cups are also a handy way to give liquid medicines. However, dosing errors have occurred with them. Always check to make sure the units such as teaspoon, tablespoon, mL, or cubic centimeters (cc) on the cup or syringe match the units of the dose you want to give.

Liquid medicines often do not taste good, but many flavors are now available and can be added to any liquid medicine. Ask your pharmacist.

Unit conversions

1 mL = 1 cc
2.5 mL = 1/2 teaspoon
5 mL = 1 teaspoon
15 mL = 1 tablespoon
3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon

Updated by: Charles I. Schwartz, MD, FAAP, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Regional Medical Director of Penn Medicine Primary and Specialty Care, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, General Pediatrician at PennCare for Kids, Phoenixville, PA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only — they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.
© 1997- 2026 A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.