We don't have an IV team but are wondering about putting together a cart for IV venipuncture supplies and wondering what facilities with IV teams do. Do you have a cart that goes from room to room? If yes, how do you clean the cart between patients? What supplies do you put in the cart? Does it have a sharps container also? What do you do when needing to start an IV for a patient in isolation? Do you leave it outside the room and just bring in the supplies?
Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
As a member of an IV Team, we have IV carts. If the cart is left outside the pt's room the cart has to be locked per Joint Commission. For non-isolation rooms I may place the cart partially into the room with the front of the cart facing me. But, I will only take to the bedside the supplies that I need. Anything that is placed down in a patients room is not suppose to go into another patient's room, let alone being placed back into the cart! For isolation rooms I lock my cart, taking in only needed supplies. If I find I need more, I have to deglove, leave the room and get my supplies.
Supplies that are in our cart are anything we need for starts, care and maintenance if peripheral sites and central lines. Different gauges of peripheral accesses, extension sets, saline flushes, 3ml and 10ml empty syringes, blood transfusion supplies, central line kits, statlocks, biopatches, needleless connectors, alocohol wipes, chloraprep, 2x2 gauze, sterile 2x2 gauze, sterile antibiotic ointment, individual small and large tegaderms, IV drug book, etc. We want to limit our trips to the floor's supply room as much as possible. Our old carts did have a sharps container, but our new carts do not. We just use the container in the room.
Our PICC cart has everything we need for PICC placement, and then a little bit of everything else so we are readily prepared.
Hope this helps
Bobbi Martin, RN
Archbold Memorial Hospital, Thomasville, GA