This brings up a potentially dangerous issue with enteral feeding products. The enteral feeding "world" has standardized their equipment - tubes, tubing sets, connections - to all be purple. As many of you know, some power PICCs are also purple. Enteral feeding companies will be distributing new devices and supplies throughout the remainder of the year and into first quarter of 2015. This new equipment will have a unique luer connector that will not fit any IVs or other tubing connections - we will need to purchase new irrigation syringes as well - the catheter tip 60 cc syringes will not fit on the new tube connections. The companies have worked very hard to make misconnections impossible, but it's too bad that purple was selected to denote ENTERAL.
When you start seeing these supplies, you might want to educate your staff that these have nothing to do with power PICCs that are purple! Even before the purple color, the enteral tubing was made so that it was too small to fit into an IV - it would just fall out. Some nurses would TAPE the tubing to the IV to make it fit - and deliver tube feeding intravenously, killing the patient.
Just wanted to raise your awareness of these new supplies.
See INS Standards. No evidence that color coding is useful. Not aware of any other document that has any other information.
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
This brings up a potentially dangerous issue with enteral feeding products. The enteral feeding "world" has standardized their equipment - tubes, tubing sets, connections - to all be purple. As many of you know, some power PICCs are also purple. Enteral feeding companies will be distributing new devices and supplies throughout the remainder of the year and into first quarter of 2015. This new equipment will have a unique luer connector that will not fit any IVs or other tubing connections - we will need to purchase new irrigation syringes as well - the catheter tip 60 cc syringes will not fit on the new tube connections. The companies have worked very hard to make misconnections impossible, but it's too bad that purple was selected to denote ENTERAL.
When you start seeing these supplies, you might want to educate your staff that these have nothing to do with power PICCs that are purple! Even before the purple color, the enteral tubing was made so that it was too small to fit into an IV - it would just fall out. Some nurses would TAPE the tubing to the IV to make it fit - and deliver tube feeding intravenously, killing the patient.
Just wanted to raise your awareness of these new supplies.
Wendy Erickson RN
Eau Claire WI