[drewba]

I am currently employed in a community hospital that has experienced exponential growth during the past 5 years. As a result our existing site rite assisted picc team can be overwhelmed and although our success for bedside placement is greater than 98% some patients require additional fluoro for placement. I would like to know what if any practice regulations there are for nursing inserting PICC's under fluoro? Can we do this? is there any existing arrangements whereby a radiologist must be in the room at time of fluoro. I am sure there are implications for billing as well. I would greatly appreciate anyones time and input regarding this query as we try to amalgamate skills in this area to provide optimal patient outcome cost effectively. Look forward to hearing. I currently practice in NY state. I also responded to angiorn with this as well.Don't want to create any confusion but am looking for reply regarding this practice for nurses.
Drewba

[dianah]

What are the NY State requirements for operating fluroro?? Do the techs (Chief Tech) know, or could they find out? Check with your BON, too; Scope of Practice may have some funky, quirky or obscure entry relating to this.

I have no personal experience doing this, only that from observing/assisting the Radiologist do it. I'll be interested in any replies you get. Good luck!

[Lanurse0417]

Ok here goes....not sure whether or not my answer is legally the right way to do things, i can just say how we do it. We have I guess moderate sized hospital (about 200 beds). We place the picc lines in IR there are two nurses and two rad techs. We do most of our picc lines without assistance from the radiologist (b/c we do more of them we are better at it then they are). We do them under fluro if the patient is able to come down to the dept, if not we do them at bedside. All four of us are trained in putting the picc lines in. The radiologist is not always present when we shoot the fluro to check them, but most always the rad tech is there to help us with shooting it if we needed help (but we could do it also without them). Like I said not sure how legal it is but it is just the way we have always done it.....

[KEVIN88GT]

Id like to get the same answer for New York as I'm interested in putting a PICC line under fluoro with sono guidance....

[BigDog]

We have a rad tech assist with insertion in the specials area,they apply the fluro then shoot cxr to confirm placement.