"Floating" IV

[Marti17]

I have a question about a new IV start technique I was told about this evening. A bit of background for me, I am still a nursing student half way through my second try at nursing school, Failing out of a BSN school spring of last year and now in a Community College ADN program, anyway my wife and I had dinner this evening with some friends of ours who's wife is in Nursing school at my old BSN college, there are some new instructors there since my time at the school, anyway we were talking IV's and she mentioned "floating" in the IV on a patient with difficult veins and dehydration. This is something I had never heard of and so I went on an internet search for this technique, it brought me to allnurses.com to an old post from 2007 that spoke briefly about "floating" IV's, three of the four nurses that responded to that post did not like the idea of it. I am skeptical of it myself, I get the Idea of how it could help advance a catheter into a vein that is difficult but also the risks involved with it. I was hoping for some new responses to this idea, i am on summer break from my nursing school to ask any of my instructors about this but either way would like the opinion of the many knowledgeable nurses on this site. Thank You

[TU RN, DNP, CRNA]

I place IVs at least once a shift, which is far less than what your typical ED nurse is used to, and I've never floated. We use Jelcos where I work so in order to float the IV one would have to get flash, withdraw the needle, attach the piggy tail/flush to the hub, then proceed to flush as you advance the half-inserted catheter. I feel that in the process of detaching the needle from the hub and attaching the tubing, the risk of incidentally dislodging the catheter is greater than the benefit of using the float technique. This is just me spitballing from a practical standpoint though, other posters have different experiences with different supplies.