Help me understand the difference

Nursing Students General Students

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Specializes in Utilization Review.

I'm studying IV Meds

I realize that IV push and infusing are two different things. That's why I'm confused when I see a question saying: "The doctor ordered morphine 8 mg IV push-via infusing IV of half normal saline. Describe the preparation for this med referencing your Gahart IV Med book." Sooo....which should I be looking at in Gahart? IV Injection? or Infusion?

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

what this means is that the patient has an iv bag of 1/2 normal saline continually infusing at some rate. the order for "morphine 8 mg iv push via infusing iv of half normal saline" merely means that you are going to use the existing iv equipment that is already in place to inject this morphine into the patient. you will go to the lowest y-connector on the iv tubing that is closest to the iv insertion site, stop the infusion of normal saline, pinch off the iv tubing above the y-connector, insert your syringe with the 8mg of morphine in it into the y-connector and perform your iv push. when you have completed that you will resume the infusion of the 1/2 normal saline.

it helps and makes a lot more sense to actually see this visually instead of reading it. you may find a video or a picture of it in the weblinks listed on post #5 of this sticky thread: https://allnurses.com/nursing-student-assistance/any-good-iv-127657.html - any good iv therapy or nursing procedure web sites

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