Closed suction systems

neonursey · Jan 21, 2005

The only type of ventilation where in-line is required at our hospital is HFV. (RT turns of machine while we suction) Patients on NO should have an in-line but often don't. Its annoying too, because we obviously have to BAG with NO, not O2, so each time we have to suction we have to call an RT and wait. For our micropreemies, we have a pressure gauge attached to our bag so we can see how much pressure we are bagging at-and never exceed 20mmhg, to avoid pneumothorax of course.

We did have an incident with in-line though, after the BB was suctioned one night, the catheter was not pulled all the way back up out of the ET tube (has a little black tip at the end of the catheter so you know when you are all the way out of the et tube, Nurse had not noticed it was just at the entrance) Anyways, turns out it was blocking her tube and she desated to 40% in 5 min. :uhoh21:

We are never allowed to suction on our own, unless the baby is on cpap or its an emergency....So, I too am a huge fan of In-line!!!!

dawngloves, BSN, RN · Jan 21, 2005

You all have NO hooked up to your bag/masks. right?

neonursey · Jan 21, 2005

We have one bag hooked up to NO (on the NO system) and one with O2 by the bed. We are "not allowed" to turn on the fricken NO flow meter (even though it is EXACTLY the same as the O2 flow meter) so when the baby needs to be bagged with the NO we need an RT. If it is an emergency we can bag with O2. :uhoh3: (whoop-di-doooo)

BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN · Jan 21, 2005

We aren't allowed to turn the bag on either....but would you really want to be in the room with it on all the time? We had a kid in our isolation room and if someone left the bag on, you could TASTE it. Also, the expense of it...I know that we are alloted X amount and when we go over it we have to pay BIG bucks per tank. It is not a cheap drug and should not be wasted by leaving your bag on.

We use the Ballards..and we have made it a charge item, so each kid that has it gets charged for the link and the line. We weren't crazy about them at first, they are pretty awkward, but we have grown to like them.

We did one man suctioning too, and then when we got the in lines, we went to two man/or inline. We also are seeing less resp. infections. We can two man with another RN or RT.