"Looping" IV Tubing

Specialties Infusion

Published

I have a question regarding the practice of "looping" the end of the IV tubing to a port on the same tubing.

Was wondering how many of you have seen this practice and/or know if your hospital IV policies endorse it??

From what I understand, this practice is not recommended by the INS as their standards state, " a compatible sterile covering should be asceptically attached after each intermittent use."

This is a practice we're dealing with at my hospital but I was curious how many other places are seeing it?

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.

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Specializes in Oncology, Triage, Tele, Med-Surg.

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. :(

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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....

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Lazy or not isn't really the issue.

Follow your hospital policy and you can't go wrong.

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Specializes in Oncology, Education, Ortho, Infusion.
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....

What about the idea that wiping with alcohol doesn't really do anything, except float the bacteria? ( I am against the whole looping thing, but in general I have been thinking about this, alcohol issue).....wiping ports before IVP, injection sites prior to injections......etc....

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Alcohol, when used properly will disinfect ports prior to use. It functions as a dessicant, essentially drying the bacteria to death. If you don't allow the alcohol time to do its job (ie dry) then you are wasting your time.

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Specializes in Oncology, Education, Ortho, Infusion.
Alcohol, when used properly will disinfect ports prior to use. It functions as a dessicant, essentially drying the bacteria to death. If you don't allow the alcohol time to do its job (ie dry) then you are wasting your time.

I did actually research this further after posting. And you are right, what I found was 3 minutes to dry on a surface and 10 minutes on the skin!:icon_roll I've never seen anyone wipe the port and then wait 3 minutes! Have you?

Oh well, I'll continue to use it though!

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