med through NG; too thick to drain but flushes well.

[unsaint77]

I was helping other nurse so I do NOT know if this pt had NG or NJ. (the head of bed 30 deg up) we stopped the feeding pump and the line flushed fine but when we administer maalox into the open inverted syringe it didn't drain. We must waited for five minutes and there was no draining what so ever. so we carefully disconnected the syringe and pushed the med very gently. It went in fine and flushed with 30 cc of water just fine. His abdomen was soft. we didn't check for residual before we administer the med. Is this normal? Did we do something wrong? why didn't the med drain?

[BlueDevil,DNP, DNP, RN]

just too thick. you did fine. I pushed meds, hard, all the time. No biggie.

[ckh23, BSN, RN]

Or there is a bunch if crud that is collecting by the opening thus reducing the patency.

[CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN]

Are you just using the syringe opened and pouring the meds in via gravity?

As the PP mentioned..could have been a build up of tube feeing inside the tube. It is soooo much easier adnd quicker to just dump the meds and flushes in and do gravity but please use the syringe to push a flush in once or more per shift. This clears all that crud out of the tube and prevents build up. Even if the tube is new or looks like it flushes well, this is still needed. I've seen many an good g tube clog because of all of this.

With the maalox, I wold have mixed it with a bit of water.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I always push meds with NG/NJ tubes... they're so much smaller than PEGs/Mic-KEYS and don't often flow to gravity that well. At least in peds... 6 Fr and 8 Fr tubes are very thin, it's easier to just push the meds. If it's too much volume to be pushed, I'd run it on the pump.

[That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

You didn't check residual or placement before giving?