A nurse is preparing to administer 0.9% sodium chloride (NSS) 3000 mL IV to infuse over 24 hr. The drop factor on the manual IV tubing is 10 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.)

Total volume to infuse: 3000 mL Total time for infusion: 24 hours Drop factor of the tubing: 10 gtt/mL We need to convert the total infusion time from hours to minutes: 24 hours × 60 minutes/hour = 1440 minutes Now we can use the formula to calculate the drops per minute: Drops/minute=Total time (minutes)Total volume (mL)×Drop factor (gtt/mL)​ Plugging in the values: Drops/minute=1440 minutes3000 mL×10 gtt/mL​ Drops/minute=1440 minutes30000 gtt​ Drops/minute=20.833... gtt/minute Rounding to the nearest whole number, the nurse should set the manual IV infusion to deliver 21 gtt/min.