"Looping" IV Tubing

I see nothing wrong with looping...but now my question is why are pt's being disconnected so frequently? A few here have made comments about pt's turning in bed, or being toileted. We only loop when the dr. has ordered a lock...but they have IV abx q 12 or 24 hours.

I agree that it's the cleaning that matters. If the nurse isn't cleaning...looping doesn't matter...their practice does.

This article says nothing about looping..it simply says you should not leave it hanging in the air.

Wouldn't that be the same as keeping a secondary line hooked up after the infusion was finished? I see that all the time, now that you mention it, so now you've all got me wondering if that's ok. I was taught that it was, so why is looping different?

unfortunately the use of needleless systems has caused a few problems (not that I would ever want anything else). One of these problems is looping. We too have had a problem with this practice. We see nurses not scrubbing these ports and looping out of convenience. We have been teaching the nurses not to to this. These ports are for injection only. The end of any disconnected IV tubing should have a sterile end on it and every IV company makes them!!!!!. Every single time you use an IV system there is a risk of introducing micoorganisms into the system why increase that risk with this bad practice. INS knows what they are talking about and their practice standards hold up in court.

While many see nothing wrong with looping--consider, Many nurses do not or improperly cleanse the hub before insering the tubing end or the connector. The recommended cleansing is using an Alcohol prep vigorously wait for it to dry and then repeat. Please read this short article. http://www.ismp.org/newsletters/acut...s/20070726.asp.

Looping is NOT standard of care. It is outlawed in our hospital.

OK, maybe I am old school, but I was trained, (and practiced), not to disconnect patients/clients from their IVs. I have threaded IV bags through arms of clothing etc. Then only way to maintain "sterility" in NOT to open the connection, Keeping a "closed system" so to speak.

sure seems like an alcohol pad is more easily accessiblle than a cap in most settings. We do this frequently, after wiing, as it is no different than using the port for injection.

The nursing council was at our staff meeting this past week & said we are not to be looping and that she will see to it that we have caps provided (so far we didn't have any to use unless we took one off a flush.) Everyone on our floor has been looping because we don't have caps! I always give a good "juicing the orange" alcohol cleaning to the Y-site before I hook it up, but I hardly ever see other nurses doing so, so I agree it is not a safe practice. Another example where it was a HUGE risk was .... one night, coming on to my shift and assessing my patient, I find his IV is looped to the y-site when he should have had it infusing. I clean his lock and hook him back up... He was in pain and I mention that his PCA is hooked back up and he can press the button if he needs to. To that he mentions "I've been pressing that button for an hour and it just doesn't give me any relief." EGAD!!!!

He said the day nurse had unhooked him to go to the bathroom and he forgot that she had not hooked him back up. But he kept pushing his pca button. Had the narcotic had been going thru the tubing back into the Y-site and back into his maintenance fluid bag - possibly creating a disaster overdose when I hooked him back up??? I got the chills wondering what could have happened if we hadn't talked as I hooked him back up. I tossed the whole thing and started over.

Looping IV tubing is simply bad practice. THe problem with it is most nurses dont swab the port before attaching the end of the tubing into the port. This contaminates the tubing. Now if your changing your tubing every 72 or 96 hours,, you have contaminated tubing sitting there being used over and over, becoming recontaminated after each use.

We had a BSI issue a year ago or so, and one of the few changes we implemented was the ban of looping IV tubing. We made readily available sterile syringe caps or the nurses could also take the cap off of the flush syringe and attach it to the end of the tubing. Once this practice was established, we went almost a year without a CRBSI.

My opinion and my opinion only....

Lazy or not isn't really the issue.
Follow your hospital policy and you can't go wrong.