Eye Blocks: How draws the medicine up?

[Hannah Rose]

What are others doing with eye block medications? Right now the circulating nurse draws the medicine up and then hands it over to the preadmission/Ambulatory nurse. That nurse is then responsible for giving it to the doctor. It is labeled of course. The circulatinging nurse is usually not present when the block takes place.

Thanks,

Hannah

[ageless]

When I worked with eye surgery that is how we did it too. I didn't think much of it then, but I understand your question.

[cindybeth]

Where I work, the block is done in the O.R., therefore the pre-op nurse is not involved at all. (Our patients get heavy sedation--propofol--to recieve this block, therefore the O.R. is really necessary... is that not what you do?)

I have never really been taught that giving something that was mixed by someone else to be bad. Think about it, we do it all the time. Pharmacy mixes heparin drips, TPN, God knows what else, and we rely on the label. Heparin/Papavarine mixes are on the field, then the scrub gets relieved. But again, labeled. We can only go by the label on many, many occasions. If there is an error in the mix, I don't see how you could be responsible for a med error or something. But you would be held responsible for failture to recognize an ADR.

[Hannah Rose]

I understand what you are saying. What I would like to see happen is that the Ambulatory Surgery Nurse draw up their own medicine to free up the OR nurse's time.

Hannah:)

[ageless]

I prefer to think of it as the patient's medication.......

[chartleypj]

For a retrobulbar block done just prior to the procedure, the scrub draws up the meds aseptically and labels syringes for the surgeon who injects after prepping and draping.

At one time, one of our opthalmic surgeons prefered to draw up his own meds prior to his sub-tenon injection which he did prior to the eye prep.

Lately, almost all of our opthamologists are using topical anesthesia requiring just tetracaine gtts prior to a prep. One of them still uses a little lidocaine injection intraop. All meds are drawn up by the scrub and labeled appropriately.

I hope this helps.

Paula

[spineCNOR]

Where I work retrobulbar blocks are done in the OR- patients are given propofol as in Cindybeth's facility. The circulator draws up and labels the block meds.

I really don't understand why the OR circulator would draw up meds that are to be given by someone else in Same Day.

[angelaADSN]

For our eye blocks, the circulating nurse mixes up the block in the OR and hands it off to the holding room nurse. The holding room nurse then hands it off to the doctor. The holding room nurse sedates the patient with 1-2 mg versed before the block is given. The block is also done in holding area and the patient is then sent to the OR to get the cataract out. When we had our joint commision walk through they were aware of how we did this and they didn't seem to have a problem with it as long as it was labeled.