by THSN1975

I need help!!!! In my unit, when a baby goes to surgery, an RN will accompany the baby. She will take with her a...for lack of a better word...a bag filled with additional supplies should they be needed while in surgery.
The bags (we have 2) are not organized and one may have something that the other does not....my question is...what do other units do? Do you have bags? What do you put in the bags? What kind of bags? How many of each item do you put in the bags? Do you have an inventory system? How do you make sure there are no expired items? ANY INFO WILL BE APPRECIATED!!!!!!

Re: Surgery Bags

We just take down one of our code / delivery bags. It has all the essential supplies, including code meds. We have most things separated by usage into plastic bags within the different compartments of the code bags. These plastic bags will contain all the necessary components for surfactant administration, intubation, IV insertion, suctioning, central line placement...... This way you can find all the necessary supplies for an emergent situation quickly with out having to dig all over the bag for various supplies. While the OR always has emergency supplies on hand, they often don't have the neonatal specific stuff within reach.

Since we have a total of 4 of these bags that get used for deliveries / OR use, they get checked each shift by the charge nurse to make sure that all supplies that are supposed to be in there, really are. Sometimes right after a crazy delivery the charge nurse doesn't have time / forgets to restock what she took out of the bag... so by checking it a few times a day (and recording that you did so), they're (almost always) fully stocked and ready to go. Every 3 months on our unit, these bags, our crash carts, and our general supply room gets inventoried for expiration dates.

Re: Surgery Bags

We have two "tackle" boxes that we use. Our pharmacy keeps a med bag in there that has the standard resuc. meds, the bag has a pharmacy tag on it and pharmacy keeps tabs on when things need replaced in there. We keep also keep in there a laryngoscope, blades, ETT's, pedicaps, tape, syringes, IV start supplies, warm packs, extra leads, pulseox cables and toot-sweet. The box is checked each night by the evening charge nurse to make sure it is locked (that is how we know if anything needs replaced). Once a month it is opened to check exp dates on warm packs, etc. We keep checklists for all daily checks such as code boxes, defib and fridges.

Re: Surgery Bags

info is much appreciated.....I'm thinking 'less' is going to be better
thanks again!!!