I'm curious about how folks in smaller facilities (such as mine) are dealing with the requirement for a daily assessment of need for CVC's. I need to come up with a game plan to acclomplish this.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
I'm curious about how folks in smaller facilities (such as mine) are dealing with the requirement for a daily assessment of need for CVC's. I need to come up with a game plan to acclomplish this.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
We tried varous methods. We would check the pharmacy printout as to what the patient was on, That wasn't very efficient because we would seee patients on three ab's incl Vanco, then find the pt was going home tomorrow. We would check in with the nursing units, and ask the nurses if they thought anyone was a candidate for any lines but that wasn't very helpful either. Ultimately we do two things, educate educate, educate, and that only works when you have a relatively low turnover. The other thing we do is patient rounds, We pick up a lot of stuff that way. it works well but not everyone has time to do that.
Your education for primary care staff nurses can focus on when a short peripheral catheter is no longer the catheter of choice. This is based on number of available peripheral venous sites, skin turgor, anticipated length of therapy, pH and osmolarity of the prescribed medications, vesicant nature of the meds, etc. Teach them when these catheters are no appropriate and this should trigger a consultation with the infusion team for a more indepth assessment about the most appropriate catheter.
Lynn Hadaway, M.Ed., RN, BC, CRNI
www.hadawayassociates.com
Lynn Hadaway, M.Ed., RN, NPD-BC, CRNI
Lynn Hadaway Associates, Inc.
PO Box 10
Milner, GA 30257
Website http://www.hadawayassociates.com
Office Phone 770-358-7861