This group has information on reducing costs related to IV flushing frequency. They state 12 hours for intermittent therapy. 24 hours for the ambulatory patient they say is a safe practice. They also said consider going back to multiple dose vials for flushes, as opposed to prefilled syringes. As anyone encountered them for looking at changing practice? thank you
The use of multidose vials is a dead give-away that they do not know what they are talking about. INS, CDC, ISMP, APIC, etc all are extremely strong about getting away from multidose vials. go to www.oneandonlycampaign.org.
Check out the Safe Injection Practices section. You will see what I mean. Multidose vials and their erroneous use have been the cause of more than 150,000 people in the USA requiring test for bloodborne pathogens since 1999. Primarily this has been in outpatient infusion settings but it has primarily been from catheter flushing procedures. The high incidence of this practice is what led the CDC to get involved and create the One and Only Campaign in the website I mentioned.
Additionally, all VADs used for intermittent infusions must be flushed and locked immediately following the infusion. If this is every 6 hours, you must flush and lock every 6 hours. You can not stretch it out to 12 or 24 hours. I have never heard of this group but have serious issues with what they are selling!! Lynn
Lynn Hadaway, M.Ed., RN, BC, CRNI
Lynn Hadaway Associates, Inc.
126 Main Street, PO Box 10
Milner, GA 30257
Website http://www.hadawayassociates.com
Office Phone 770-358-7861
Do you think these consultants actually have a current up to date clinician?
Purchase the INS Standards of Care and the INS flushing cards and refer them to a national organizatin that has published standards of care for maintenance of a vascular access device. If you do not flush after giving a medication I guess they want all your lines to have chemical precipitatates as the drugs intermix without flushing. Is this what they mean by intermittant flushing. Twice a day but not after medication delivery?
I suggest as Lynn does to refer them to Michael Cohen's safe medical practice site on the use of multi-dose vials and incidence of contamination, cross contamination, and even hepatitis transmission. We do not use multi-dose vials and multi-dose bags we pull from for a reason.
Kathy Kokotis