Hi Nurses! I was hoping someone could help with a discussion we were having at work yesterday. We were discussing different ways to run in IV meds, specifically IVIG. Sometimes we piggyback things into the main line after the pump, so that the main fluid runs with the piggyback (example: a K-rider). But one of the RNs had to hang IVIG (a blood product). We looked up our policy on it, and it said to "piggyback it into a D5W bag" and run it through a pump. To me, that meant to hang it like a regular piggyback and to use short piggyback tubing...you can always stop the piggyback and switch back to the main fluid if there is a reaction or something. When we went in to hang it, the pump was still set up from the dose the day before. They had the D5 on the pump and had used long tubing to hook the IVIG in after the pump. That was wrong to me. If you are going to do it like that, it should have been the IVIG in the pump and the d5 hooked into that one, not the other way around. So I guess I'm asking for your opinion...would you have used short or long tubing on this one and why? My thought was short because when I hang blood, we switch the 0.9 off and just let the blood run in, and since IVIG is a blood product, it only made sense to me to do it the same way. I do a lot of blood and platelets, and some FFP, but not much IVIG, so I don't really even remember what I did last time. I hope this even makes enough sense for someone to be able to respond, lol!
