[madwife2002]

When drawing blood from a double lumen PICC line, which has TPN running do you

1/ Flush with 10mls of normal saline, pull back 10mls of blood discard and throw that away before taking your sample.

2/ Turn off TPN and wait for 30 mins and then draw blood, after having flushed with normal saline, drawing back, throw first sample away and then take a second sample.

3/ Draw the blood without flushing


4/ Turn off TPN, immediatly flush the line, draw blood, discard first specimen and then take a second sample.

5/ None of the above-explain

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Our policy for blood draws from a PICC was to stop any IVF infusing, flush the lines with 10cc of saline, withdraw a waste, withdraw the sample, then flush with 20cc of saline before starting the fluids again. If TPN was infusing, we flushed with 20cc of saline beforehand. When I left, they were re-writing the policy to delete the step of flushing prior to the waste.