Hourly doses of vent sedation, is this common?

[jkej]

This small ICU doc uses, (almost exclusively) 1mg to 4mg iv doses prn of ativan and morphine for vent sedation. No drips are used. Do any other ICU's do this? Are there any advantages to this? Septic patients with "iffy" blood pressures don't seem to like the morphine too well.

[Reno1978, BSN, RN]

For most vented patients, we use titratable drips: fentanyl and either propofol or versed. Sometimes precedex will be used if we don't want to lose our neuro exam.

Our hearts come back on precedex and the extubation process goes pretty smoothly.

My last hospital used 5mg morphine 2mg ativan Q1h IVP for sedation and I definitely feel my patients are more comfortable on continuous infusions.