Despite what the Disney "Mary Poppins" song "A Spoonful of Sugar" says about "a spoonful of medicine" making the "medicine go down," a new study says that the utensil is not the best measuring device for children's medicine.

The study, titled "Unit of Measurement Used and Parent Medication Dosing," was released on Pediatrics' website this week. It recommends that parents uses droppers and syringes, which measure liquids in millimeters, rather than spoons when administering medicine to their children.

"A move to a milliliter preference for dosing instructions for liquid medications could reduce parent confusion and decrease medication errors, especially for groups at risk for making errors, such as those with low health literacy and non-English speakers," Dr. Shonna Yin, the study's lead author and a New York University School of Medicine assistant professor of pediatrics, told WebMD.

Researchers studied almost 300 mostly Latino parents with children younger than 9 years old. The children were treated for different issues at two different emergency rooms in New York City and sent home with various liquid medications consisting mostly of antibiotics.

"Medication errors were common: 39.4 percent of parents made an error in measurement of the intended dose, 41.1 percent made an error in the prescribed dose. Furthermore, 16.7 percent used a nonstandard instrument," the report concluded.

Parents who used spoons had even larger margins of error.

"[They] were 50 percent more likely to give their children incorrect doses than those who measured in more precise milliliter units," Dr. Alan Mendelsohn, a co-author and associate professor at New York University's medical school, told The Associated Press.

In addition, parents who used spoons were 2.3 times more likely to administer the wrong dose and 1.9 times more likely to not follow the prescription's instructions.

Almost one-third of parents used a "kitchen spoon" when instructed to administer a teaspoon's or tablespoon's worth of medicine, WebMD reports.

"When you look at a kitchen spoon, the amount that will actually sit in the spoon is less likely to be exactly what it's meant to be," Dr. Ian Paul, Penn State College of Medicine's department of pediatrics associate vice chair for research, explained. "You're less likely to get the right amount onto that spoon and then deliver it to a child's mouth."
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