Contents in Crash Cart

[ahorton0918]

I am a nurse educator at a hospital and we are looking at changing some of the contents in the drawers. Is Amiodarone infusion typically stocked on the crash cart? Also how many calcium clorides and sodium bicards do you stock in the crash cart? Also, how do you do a review of the contents in the crash cart? open it up or have pictures, diagrams, and list of the contents for the nurses to review? The problem is floor nurses do very few codes, so they are not familiar with the contents. When there is a code, nurses do not know where to find things and it is complete choas!

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

Your crash carts should be uniform throughout the organization particularly if you ever move employees around. Review the equipment often.

[TooterIA]

We usually have at least 4-5 Ca Chlorides and bicarbs. Yes, our infusion is in the crash cart.

Night shift is required to do crash cart checks, there is a list that says :Drawer 1, Drawer 2, ets that lists the contents.

Mock codes should be required and staff should be required to open up the cart and learn where stuff is.

On the outside of the cart, there are also stickers for "IV fluids, meds" etc, so we can usually guess pretty quickly which drawer we need to start looking in. Why arent your floor nurses taking responsibility and learning where to find stuff in your carts?