I’m sure you’ve seen and used one as a common tool to assess clinician skills in a simulated training environment. There are different PIV checklists used by various healthcare facilities but it is difficult to locate validated checklists to measure practicing clinician PIV insertion skill due to a lack of validity and reliability evidence to…
Yeah, this post is about gloves. I’m going to revisit this…not wearing gloves when starting a peripheral IV.. Then there’s the extreme, when healthcare providers wear gloves for everything like taking your blood pressure and temperature!! (save this for another time) We should all know about Universal Precautions, right? It has been around since 1983,…
Q: I saw the practice recommendation to limit tourniquet time to less than 1 minute when drawing blood to reduce hemolysis and inaccurate chemistry lab values. Once we stick and get a blood return, we wait till we’ve collected all our blood samples before we release the tourniquet and apply the dressing to the IV…
A patient recently told me that she has bad veins and expect to be stuck numerous times for a peripheral IV insertion. I asked her how many times did the nurses stick her before they got an peripheral IV ? She replied: Oh, “it depends on the nurse but they keep sticking me till they get…
A: The goal when selecting the proper gauge of an peripheral IV catheter is to ensure that the best device meets the patient’s needs. This means taking into consideration many factors such as: Prescribed therapy/type of solution Duration of treatment Peripheral vein availability/vein integrity Diagnosis /Age Known complications of the device The Infusion Nurses Society standards of practice…
Originally posted on Infusion Nurse Blog:
This week, I posted on Twitter an article I saw in the American Nurse Today about “Calculating IV drip rates with confidence”. For an infusion nurse, calculations of drip rates and drug concentration is a given with the nature of my job. I didn’t realize that some nurses don’t…
At every INS Annual Meeting, the exhibit hall is the one of the highlights of the week. I am very grateful to all the vendors who were there and were always willing to educate us on their products. This helps us contribute greatly to patient care and safety. As I always do, here’s my disclaimer…
In case we have forgotten: pH – expression of acidity and refers to the amount of hydrogen ion concentration. The alkalinity or acidity of a solution depends on the degree of hydrogen ion concentration. An increase in the hydrogen ions results in a more acid solution, while a decrease results in a more alkaline solution.…
Nearly 53 million outpatient procedures are performed annually in the United States. While most of these procedures occur in hospital outpatient departments, a growing number are being done in nonhospital-based facilities such as ambulatory surgery centers and physician offices. One of these procedures include infusion therapy, the administration of fluids and medications via the venous…
Greetings my dear colleagues!! I recently recorded a short podcast with the Infusion Nurses Society and is now available on line. Hope you’ll find a few minutes to listen in. Thanks! Recommendations for Improving Safety Practices with Short Peripheral Catheters Despite the frequent use of short peripheral catheters (SPCs) in all health care settings, education…
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