A nurse is caring for a client who is postoperative following an appendectomy and is prescribed D, lactated Ringer's at 150 mL/hr by continuous IV Infusion for 12 hr. The drop factor of the manual IV tubing is 20 gtt/mL. The nurse should set the manual IV infusion to deliver how many gtt/min? (Round the answer to the nearest whole number. Use a leading zero if it applies. Do not use a trailing zero.)

To calculate the flow rate in gtt/min, the nurse should use the formula: (Volume in mL * Drop factor) / Time in minutes. In this case, the prescribed volume is 150 mL/hr. Since there are 60 minutes in an hour, the time for the infusion is 12 hours * 60 minutes/hour = 720 minutes. The drop factor is 20 gtt/mL. Plugging these values into the formula gives: (150 mL * 20 gtt/mL) / 720 minutes = 3000 gtt / 720 minutes = 4.1666 gtt/min. Rounding to the nearest whole number, the nurse should set the manual IV infusion to deliver 4 gtt/min.