central line blood sampling

I can answer all these things for you. Please remember that hospitals and health care organizations can and do make their own policies and base these on a variety of things...the law...the current standard of care which is based on a variety of things such as research, published guidelines and Joint Commission requirements...to name a few. Nursing care at least needs to meet the current standard...but can also exceed the standard.

1 Generally speaking you want to avoid blood draws from a Midline catheter as it is considered a peripheral IV. You need to think of this line as a means to deliver the prescribed therapy (should meet the accepted guidelines for the use of a midline). If you are drawing blood from it repeatedly you will decrease the dwell time and risk clotting it off. I wrote this in our policy as well and have also noticed a huge increase in our dwell times when we just allow the RNs to use it for the IV therapies.

2. Oh the Dilantin issue and PICC lines...where do I start....first of all we do NOT allow Dilantin to be infused through our PICCs......the ph of Dilantin is 12 ....and it must be given very carefully with NS flush...then the Dilantin...usually push 50 mg over a min...then another NS flush...of by PF with a filter......no matter how carefully you give it through the PICC we still get crystallization (a precipitate) b/c of the length of the PICC some always sticks and then you infuse something else and then it precipitates fast. You will also find that in many Pediatric hospitals they do not allow it either...imagine painstakingly putting in a 2 Fr PICC with your sterile tweezers into your tiny peds patient and coming back the next day to find it occluded...its not a pretty site....years ago I had a hard time convincing nursing of this.....then we kept track of how many times we had to replace PICCs b/c of this...and they eventually believed me...we now ask if MD will switch to Fosphenytoin...even though they do not always do this. I bet that neurologist has not replaced as many PICCs as I have (since 1989) due to crystallization


3. When you are administering TPN through any Central line...this should be a dedicated line....and that lumen should not be used for blood draws///some hospitals push this and do not allow blood draws from other lumens of that CVC...I find that unnecessary. This of course is to keep the infection risk low,especially the risk for fungal infection. If you have a staggered tip design....use the distal lumen for the TPN


4 Blood draws...here is the general rule for flushing volumes and discard volumes....you want to flush with a minimum of at least 2x the priming volume of that line and the discard is the same.....Most PICCs have a very small priming volume from 0.5 ml to 1.0 ml...so you can see.......most of flush volumes far exceed the 2 x the priming volume guideline.....so if you want to pre-flush to verify patency and then perform your discard....that is OK...but I think 20 ml is a bit much for a pre-flush...would rather see that as a post flush...and make sure nurses are performing a pulsatile push pause flush especially the final flush.....make sure all IVs infusing through any and all lumens are shut off for one full minute ....YES one FULL minute is enough....if patient is so labile that their medications can not be OFF for one full min....you will have to gain the blood from elsewhere...You do not need to dedicate a lumen for blood draws...if you have two free lumens...you can use either one unless you have a staggered tip design and then you need to use the proximal lumen..these are usually the short term acute care triple lumens that you see...Arrow brand and Edwards brand are designed this ...some nurses like to use the way. You can dedicate a lumen for meds if you like but if you have two free lumens and want to use one for your 1200 med and the other for your 1600 med...that is not a problem...triple luen PICCs usually have a large lumen..that I like to use for the blood draw if available

5...Yes you can draw blood from any groshong type catheter..whether that be a PICC port or tunneled chest groshong...a pre-flush is very helpful to open the valve


6. It is not contraindicated to draw peak and trough drug levels or coags from a CVC.....I do it all the time...you just have to make sure you get an adequate discard and NEVER mix up the discard with the specimen....Sme Hospitals may choose to write this in their policy...but the tip of that CVC is in the SVC and the blood volume dumping into that SVC is a large amt and that is where your specimen is coming from...the mistakes I see are nurses not shutting off all IVs for one full minute...not enough discard and nurses doing an improper draw and getting some of the medication into their specimen


Did I answer all your questions?