Calculating I & O

[2teach]

Literature supports that when calculating I & O for a patient with a continuous bladder irrigation, the nurse subtracts the irrigation volume from the volume in the urinary drainage bag to have the total urinary output. What about the rest of the I & O? What about the IV infusion volume and the PO intake? What if the patient has a JP, hemovac or received a blood transfusion? How do you calculate the total urinary output when a patient has a continuous bladder irrigation?

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

We consider all of those things in I&O's.

Intake includes:

IV infusions- volume calculated by rate and time it's being calculated over, or by simply clearing the IV pump.

TPN- my hospital considers this separately from IV infusions. We also count chemo separately.

Tube feedings- again, clear pump for volume

Blood products- you can get the volume off the sheet blood bank sends up

PO intake- we keep track of this on a sheet on the patient's door

If the patient is on bladder irrigation, you can count the amount of liquid put into the bladder here.

Output includes-

Stool

Emesis

Urine- via foley or void

Tube drainage. We just empty our drains when I&Os are due, and count this toward output.

I hope this answers your question.

[2teach]

Thank you