The FDA released this alert a few days ago: Triad Group Issues a Voluntary Nationwide Recall of All Lots of Alcohol Prep Pads, Alcohol Swabs, and Alcohol Swabsticks Due to Potential Microbial Contamination What??? Are you serious? We use these products to disinfect areas such as skin, injection ports, connectors, etc… prior to injection or…
As a little girl, I often heard my mother say … “You’ll be wiser when you’re older”. At that time, I thought older adults were totally cool folks. They were wise, acted, talked and behaved like they knew it all!! I couldn’t wait to become like them. As an RN, I had the same thoughts…
In the past weeks, there have several FDA alerts and recall notices related to products used in infusion therapy. Here are some of the products. Class I Recall: CareFusion Corporation, Alaris PC Units (Model 8015) Reason for Recall: Under certain wireless network conditions, a communication error can occur, which freezes the PC Unit screen. This…
Universal precautions has been around since 1983 (then called “Blood and Body Fluid Precautions”) and as defined by CDC, are a set of precautions designed to prevent transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and other bloodborne pathogens when providing first aid or health care. Under universal precautions, blood and certain body…
IV tips posted on Twitter March 2010 Infiltration: Checking for blood return or back flow of blood is good for patency but not a reliable method for assessing infiltration at IV site. If infusion continues to run when you apply digital pressure 3 inches above peripheral IV site in front of catheter tip – suspect…
Back in nursing school, we weren’t allowed to have our fingernails visible over the pads of our fingers. Even then we already knew the potential dangers of long fingernails with our nursing and patient care activities. The use of artificial acrylic fingernails has become more fashionable and so more nurses have begun wearing them even…
..is a good motto to live by. It is the Boy Scout’s motto (Be Prepared) and growing up, this was my mother’s motto (thanks, Mom). 🙂 In nursing, we were taught to always be prepared for anything and as professionals, we’ve been hard wired to live up to that motto. As nurses, we are expected…
At some point within the last 5 years, I am certain that all of us received some sort of training on how to prevent or reduce the incidence of catheter related blood stream infections (CR-BSI) associated with CVC. One of the things we’ve learned is in addition to the catheter hub, components of the IV…
…what does this really mean? What about “discard after single use”? There are long lists of medical devices that are labeled with this statement. What I am referring to is the statement printed on the packaging of disposable syringes or on the syringe itself. Ok, I know what you are thinking. Isn’t it a given…
Infusion Nurse Blog 