Dc'ing nitro drip

Please just toss the tubing. Do not put the pt at risk over saving the hospital money. Whatever you do, do not flush that nitro into the pt quikly, because you can bottem him out, resulting in a bad day for both of you. Besides, once the nitro has been d/c'd, giving him any more would consitute prescribing, and that is a no -no. Better safe than sorry, toss the tubing.

I've never heard of such a ridiculous thing!! Re use the tubing!? I guess maybe I'm not quite understanding...how do you keep the tubing sterile? Are you talking about "Y" connecting it to the Saline iv tubing? What are you flushing and saving? Or are you talking about leaving the dcd bottle up in case you need to restart it? Now we to that, as long as the bottle isn't expired...

Pt safety over money...sometimes we need to advocate to the "powers that be" what is safe, and what is not...

I'd like to hear more about this tubing being recycled - I have a pt in my ED that is coming in daily for outpatient antibiotics via PICC. She was on vacation last month and told me that the hospital that she went to would wind up her tubing every day after her abx were infused so that they could re-use it. I thought surely she was wrong, that maybe they were saving the tubing for some other non-medical purpose, or that they had a special waste bin for it. She still insisted that she thinks she used the same tubing the whole week she was there. How can this in any way be considered good nursing practice? Am I missing a piece of the picture somewhere?

I'd like to hear more about this tubing being recycled - I have a pt in my ED that is coming in daily for outpatient antibiotics via PICC. She was on vacation last month and told me that the hospital that she went to would wind up her tubing every day after her abx were infused so that they could re-use it. I thought surely she was wrong, that maybe they were saving the tubing for some other non-medical purpose, or that they had a special waste bin for it. She still insisted that she thinks she used the same tubing the whole week she was there. How can this in any way be considered good nursing practice? Am I missing a piece of the picture somewhere?

I am speechless!!

In this case you need to just toss out the tubing.....PLEASE...if anyone tells you otherwise they are wrong as this violates what would be considered the standard of care in this situation.. never reuse tubing once it has been used for its primary purpose..Most hospitals will have a policy for tubing changes every 72-96 hrs as the INS and CDC vary a bit on this. Certain specaility drips such as lipids with TPN are usually 24 hrs and Propofol is usually just 12 hours. Primary intermittent should be 24 hours....so if a VAD is locked off and you are hanging Vancomycin q 12 hrs it would only be used twice. How you deal with the nitro being in the VAD really depends upon the priming volume in that line. Most Central lines have a lower priming volume than you would think and range from . 5 ml to 2.0 ml.....the most would be in a port or tunneled line such as a chest groshong or Hickman and Broviac. and those would not exceed about 3 ml......so unless the drug is really concentrated you can just flush it....if concentrated you will need to hang a compatable IVF at the same rate until line was clear of the drug