Disposal of Heparin flushes in the home setting

SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN · Sep 19, 2013

...is there a reason you can't just throw it away?

morte, LPN, LVN · Sep 19, 2013

If it is needle adaptable, needs secure disposal. Can you break the barrel of the syringe?

...is there a reason you can't just throw it away?

SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN · Sep 19, 2013

double lumen Hickman catheter with Heparin. There are no sharps involved.

There are no sharps involved in a heparin flush in order to lock a central line. I'm assuming the syringe is the only thing left? If so, there shouldn't be an issue with just throwing it away.

LizJohnson86 · Sep 19, 2013

Thanks for the responses! Would you also dispose of a used heparin vial in a regular trash can in the home? I am just curious. I previously worked in the hospital where we disposed these items into the sharps containers.

SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN · Sep 19, 2013

I'm not aware of why you couldn't, as long as the vial is empty. We used to dump them in sharps containers too, but why? No one knew. Then we were told that our cost for disposal of sharps wasn't a flat rate but by the pound. You can bet we had a change in policy then! We have sharps containers that are labelled "glass only" now so that we can dump vials in them instead of putting them in a real sharps container.

schnookimz · Sep 19, 2013

About a year ago we started getting black boxes that looked like needle boxes and were told to put them in there. Supposedly the reasoning was that they were going in the garbage and the heparin levels were elevated in the state water supply.....who knows if that's true though...