I can't give up my Christmas trees.

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Acute Care Cardiac, Education, Prof Practice.

Yeah so I have this habit...which gets me in a bit of trouble at work. Not bad trouble, or "you're fired!" trouble. Just minimal "come on do you really need to do that?" trouble.

I have a hard time justifying to myself that fiscal cost is > patient safety on the following practice:

If a patient is on multiple different iv abx I generally put them on thier own secondary tubing.

Now I completely understand that most IV abx are "generally" compatible, and that back flushing will eliminate most issues with compatability...but I just can't seem to let go of this old practice.

Anyone else have this issue, or other patient practice issues that butt up against fiscal responsibility to the hospital?

Anyone have any solid advice as to how I can convince myself it is ok to run multiple abx on a single line? For some reason I see the little particles of Zosyn hiding in the plastic of the tubing and then screwing up my medication if I just merely backflush.

Tait

PS. Even with cross checking compatabilities I still worry.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.

Well, you can always look at it from an eco standpoint and that you're causing unnecessary waste to the environment. :)

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Specializes in Acute Care Cardiac, Education, Prof Practice.
Well, you can always look at it from an eco standpoint and that you're causing unnecessary waste to the environment. :)

lol I suppose so.

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

We have this thing where we're only supposed to give a certain number (a very small number) of panties to our postpartum moms. Now, this might not sound like a big deal, but those things can get bloody & gross very fast. I am forever breaking that rule. If my patient needs another pair of panties, by golly, she's going to get another pair of panties. I do tell them that the undies can be washed out and reused (like if she doesn't want to get her own undies yucky at home) but I am NOT going to stick just a couple pairs of underwear in there and be a grinch about it if she needs more.

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Specializes in med/surg, ICU.

Where I work, when it is time for tubing changes or a I have a new patient I only get the number of tubings that I need. I run things on the same tubing if they are compatible. I don't know why I bother though, because I will come in the next night and there will be a tubing for every single secondary medication. You are not the only one that does this.

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Specializes in School Nursing.

maybe i missed something...but what does this have to do with christmas trees ??

praiser :heartbeat

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Specializes in Acute Care Cardiac, Education, Prof Practice.
maybe i missed something...but what does this have to do with christmas trees ??

praiser :heartbeat

i joke at work and call them my "christmas trees" because they sort of resemble the limbs of trees to me.

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Specializes in Peds Critical Care, Dialysis, General.

Most of us in my unit use separate secondary tubing for our patients with multiple antibiotics. I work ICU, so we just guess it's the OCD in all of us. Nobody gives it a second thought. Just as long as it's labeled correctly with a change date, we're fine. If the med runs at a rate less than 30ml/hr, we use a syringe pump (work Peds ICU) and we'll usually discard the tubing afterward.

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