Air in line in Plum Pumps

[oldnewnurse]

Our facility has just switched from all Baxter infusion pumps to Hospira Plum pumps. Baxter pumps are all I have ever used up to this point but since I am a relatively new RN, that's not saying much. Most all of us are having trouble getting used to the cassette system in general and priming the cassette, but I am having a particular problem with intermittent infusions where we re-use the tubing (reuse for 96 hours) from a previous infusion. It seems as if every time I do this, I have air existing in the tubing above the cassette (I assume from the previous infusion running the bag dry) and the pump beeps a "CASSETTE" error. I open the pump, take the cassette out, flick it, turn it over, mess with the button, and still can't get rid of the air. This takes a lot of time and invariably I still end up changing the whole tubing. There is a backpriming feature on the pump but when we were in-serviced they demonstrated using a syringe on the pump's secondary port to pull out the excess air instead of using the backprime feature. I can't seem to get the syringe concept to pull out the air either.

Can anyone familiar with this pump give me some guidance so I do this safely and hopefully faster? Thanks.

[jeepgirl, LPN, NP]

I have noticed that when I put a syringe on to backprime, I need to first "break it in". I push and pull the plunger a couple of times before connecting it to the cassette. Usually does the trick for me! :balloons: Jaime

Yup, that's common... I always "break the seal" whenever I open up a new syringe.